VHE trial over Mobile IP

Abstract

Because surfing the World Wide Web and extending multimedia sessions for the benefit of mobile users will be basic requirements for the 21st century, the support of multimedia services in a seamless manner becomes an important feature of future telecommunication networks. Due to this increasing demand for advanced service offering at any place and on any terminal, developments in telecommunication infrastructures are changing the current global networking world. In this perspective, the virtual home environment (VHE) appears as a key concept for the 3rd generation mobile networks as the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS). It promises mobile users the ability of accessing a large range of personalized services, whatever the location or the terminal. In fact, it allows global service portability. Among other services, Internet/Intranet applications are of course attractive targets. In parallel to the works on the VHE realization, the ongoing studies in the different standardization bodies (3GPP, 3GPP2, MWIF, IETF, 3GIP) indicate that the future telecommunication systems will be IP-based. And if SIP and H.323 are natural candidates for voice over IP (VoIP) applications, Mobile IP could play an important part for the mobility management in those new generation networks. This IETF protocol allows transparent routing of IP datagrams to mobile nodes in the wide Internet. The EURESCOM Project P920 investigated the provision of VHE services through an all-IP architecture and a VHE trial was implemented, tested and evaluated. The activities reported here focus on a web based VHE realization in which Mobile IP is used as a mobility management protocol and on events happening from the end user viewpoint, when this user wants to reach personalized services in a mobility context.