Distributed mobility management with mobile Host Identity Protocol proxy

The architectural evolution from hierarchical to flatter networks creates new challenges such as single points of failure and bottlenecks, non-optimal routing paths, scalability problems, and long handover delays. The cellular networks have been hierarchical so that they are largely built on centralized functions based on which their handover mechanisms have been built. They need to be redesigned and/or carefully optimized. The mobility extension to Host Identity Protocol (HIP) proxy, mobile HIP Proxy (MHP), provides a seamless and secure handover for the Mobile Host in the hierarchical network. However, the MHP cannot ensure the same handover performance in flatter network because the MHP has also utilized the features offered by the hierarchical architecture. This paper extends the MHP to distributed mobile HIP proxy (DMHP). The performance evaluation of the DMHP in comparison to MHP and other similar mobility solutions demonstrates that DMHP does indeed perform well in the flatter networks. Moreover, the DMHP supports both efficient multi-homing and handover management for many mobile hosts at the same time to the same new point of attachment

Fault Tolerant Scalable Support for Network Portability and Traffic Engineering

The P-SHIM6 architecture provides ISP independence to IPv6 sites without compromising scalability. This architecture is based on a middle-box, the P-SHIM6, which manages the SHIM6 protocol exchange on behalf of the nodes of a site, which are configured with provider independent addresses. Incoming and outgoing packets are processed by the P-SHIM6 box, which can assign different locators to a given communication, either when it is started, or dynamically after the communication has been established. As a consequence, changes required for provider portability are minimized, and fine-grained Traffic Engineering can be enforced at the P-SHIM6 box, in addition to the fault tolerance support provided by SHIM6.This project has been supported by the RiNG project IST-2005-035167 and by the IMPROVISA project TSI2005-07384-C03-02.Publicad

Secure Connectivity With Persistent Identities

In the current Internet the Internet Protocol address is burdened with two roles. It serves as the identifier and the locator for the host. As the host moves its identity changes with its locator. The research community thinks that the Future Internet will include identifier-locator split in some form. Identifier-locator split is seen as the solution to multiple problems. However, identifier-locator split introduces multiple new problems to the Internet. In this dissertation we concentrate on: the feasibility of using identifier-locator split with legacy applications, securing the resolution steps, using the persistent identity for access control, improving mobility in environments using multiple address families and so improving the disruption tolerance for connectivity. The proposed methods achieve theoretical and practical improvements over the earlier state of the art. To raise the overall awareness, our results have been published in interdisciplinary forums.Nykypäivän Internetissä IP-osoite on kuormitettu kahdella eri roolilla. IP toimii päätelaitteen osoitteena, mutta myös usein sen identiteetinä. Tällöin laitteen identiteetti muuttuu laitteen liikkuessa, koska laitteen osoite vaihtuu. Tutkimusyhteisön mielestä paikan ja identiteetin erottaminen on välttämätöntä tulevaisuuden Internetissä. Paikan ja identiteetin erottaminen tuo kuitenkin esiin joukon uusia ongelmia. Tässä väitöskirjassa keskitytään selvittämään paikan ja identiteetin erottamisen vaikutusta olemassa oleviin verkkoa käyttäviin sovelluksiin, turvaamaan nimien muuntaminen osoitteiksi, helpottamaan pitkäikäisten identiteettien käyttöä pääsyvalvonnassa ja parantamaan yhteyksien mahdollisuuksia selviytyä liikkumisesta usean osoiteperheen ympäristöissä. Väitöskirjassa ehdotetut menetelmät saavuttavat sekä teoreettisia että käytännön etuja verrattuna aiempiin kirjallisuudessa esitettyihin menetelmiin. Saavutetut tulokset on julkaistu eri osa-alojen foorumeilla

An improved locator identifier split architecture (ILISA) to enhance mobility

The increased use of mobile devices has prompted the need for efficient mobility management protocols to ensure continuity of communication sessions as users switch connection between available wireless access networks in an area. Locator/Identifier (LOC/ID) split architectures are designed to, among other functions, enable the mobility of nodes on the Internet. The protocols based on these architectures enable mobility by ensuring that the identifier (IP address) used for creating a communication session is maintained throughout the lifetime of the session and only the location of a mobile node (MN) is updated as the device moves. While the LOC/ID protocols ensure session continuity during handover, they experience packet loss and long service disruption times as the MN moves from one access network to another. The mobility event causes degradation of throughput, poor network utilisation, and affects the stability of some applications, such as video players. This poor performance was confirmed from the experiments we conducted on a laboratory testbed running Locator Identifier Separation Protocol MN (LISP-MN) and Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). The MIPv6, as the standardised IETF mobility protocol, was used to benchmark the performance of LISP-MN. The poor performance recorded is owed to the design of the LISP-MN’s architecture, with no specific way of handling packets that arrive during handover events. Our main aim in this thesis is to introduce an Improved Locator/Identifier Split Architecture (ILISA) designed to enhance the mobility of nodes running a LOC/ID protocol by mitigating packet loss and reducing service disruption in handovers. A new network node, Loc-server, is central to the new architecture with the task of buffering incoming packets during handover and forwarding the packets to the MN on the completion of the node’s movement process. We implemented ILISA with LISP-MN on a laboratory testbed to evaluate its performance in different mobility scenarios. Our experimental results show a significant improvement in the mobility performance of MNs as reflected by the different network parameters investigated