TeleMIP: telecommunications-enhanced mobile IP architecture for fast intradomain mobility

Abstract

This article first surveys existing protocols for supporting IP mobility and then proposes an extension to the mobile IP architecture, called TeleMIP. Our architecture attempts to achieve smaller handoff latency by localizing the scope of most location update messages within an administrative domain or a geographical region. TeleMIP is intended for use in evolving third-generation wireless networks, and introduces a new logical entity, called the mobility agent, which provides a mobile node with a stable point of attachment in a foreign network. While the MA is functionally similar to conventional foreign agents, it is located at a higher level in the network hierarchy than the subnet-specific FAs. Location updates for intradomain mobility are localized only up to the MA; transmission of global location updates are necessary only when the mobile changes administrative domains and/or geographical regions. By permitting the use of private or locally scoped addresses for handling intradomain mobility, TeleMIP allows efficient use of public address space. Also, by reducing the frequency of global update messages, our architecture overcomes several drawbacks of existing protocols, such as large latencies in location updates, higher likelihood of loss of binding update messages, and loss of inflight packets, and thus provides better mobility support for real-time services and applications. The dynamic creation of mobility agents (in TeleMLP) permits the use of load balancing schemes for the efficient management of network resources.