One of the most important metrics in the design of IP mobility protocols is
the handover performance. The current Mobile IP (MIP) standard has been shown
to exhibit poor handover performance. Most other work attempts to modify MIP to
slightly improve its efficiency, while others propose complex techniques to
replace MIP. Rather than taking these approaches, we instead propose a new
architecture for providing efficient and smooth handover, while being able to
co-exist and inter-operate with other technologies. Specifically, we propose an
intra-domain multicast-based mobility architecture, where a visiting mobile is
assigned a multicast address to use while moving within a domain. Efficient
handover is achieved using standard multicast join/prune mechanisms. Two
approaches are proposed and contrasted. The first introduces the concept
proxy-based mobility, while the other uses algorithmic mapping to obtain the
multicast address of visiting mobiles. We show that the algorithmic mapping
approach has several advantages over the proxy approach, and provide mechanisms
to support it. Network simulation (using NS-2) is used to evaluate our scheme
and compare it to other routing-based micro-mobility schemes - CIP and HAWAII.
The proactive handover results show that both M&M and CIP shows low handoff
delay and packet reordering depth as compared to HAWAII. The reason for M&M's
comparable performance with CIP is that both use bi-cast in proactive handover.
The M&M, however, handles multiple border routers in a domain, where CIP fails.
We also provide a handover algorithm leveraging the proactive path setup
capability of M&M, which is expected to outperform CIP in case of reactive
handover.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure
