NEMO BS Research Articles

MROM Scheme to Improve Handoff Performance in Mobile Networks

Mobile Router (MR) mobility supported by Network Mobility Basic Support Protocol (NEMO BS) is a Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) extension that supports Host Mobility. Proposed Multihoming and Route Optimization for MANEMO (MROM) scheme is designed to provide Route Optimization (RO) and Multihomed in NEMO architectures. This paper proposes two novel schemes; MANEMO routing scheme and Multihoming-based scheme. These are to provide support for next generation networks. The proposed MROM scheme differs from other schemes for NEMO environment because it considers the requirements of more application flows parameters as packet lost delivery, handoff delay as well as throughput). Another difference is that not only the network infrastructure can begin the functionality of flow routing, but also an Edge Mobile Router (EMR) can do this flow for routing. Moreover, it utilizes the state of the art and presently active access network to perform the separation of each flow in mobile network. Thus, proposed MROM exhibits multihoming features and improves handoff performance by initiating flow-based fast registration process in NEMO environment. A handoff method is proposed with enhanced functionalities of the Local Mobility Anchors (LMA), Mobile Routers (MRs) and signaling messages with a view to achieve continuous connectivity through handoff in NEMO. Both analytical and simulation approaches are used. Analytical evaluation is carried out to analyze packet delivery lost and handoff delay of our proposed scheme. It was also shown that cost of signaling messages and packet delivery are contributing to total handoff cost. At the simulation part, network simulator 3 (NS 3) has been used as the tool to get performance metrics that have been considered like packet delivery ratio, handoff delay, and packet loss. Our proposed scheme (MROM) has been benchmarking to the standard NEMO BS Protocol and P-NEMO. In this paper, we discuss proposed MROM for next generation networks, providing detailed analysis with a numerical model, proposed MROM, by maximizing the handoff performance, has been justified to have better mobility support than the ordinary NEMO BS Protocol and PNEMO.

An Adaptive Diffserv Approach to Support QoS in Network Mobility NEMO Environment

Network mobility basic support (NEMO BS) protocol (RFC 3963) is an extension of Mobile IPv6. The NEMO BS embraced by the IETF working group to permit any node in the portable network to be accessible to the Internet despite the fact the network itself is roaming. This protocol likewise Mobile IPv6 does not deliver any kind of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees to its clients. It can barely offer the same level of services (i.e. Best-Effort) to all the users without obligation to the needs of applications. These propositions a challenge to real-time applications that demand a precise level of QoS pledge. The Differentiated Services have recently come to be the most widely used QoS support technology in IP networks due to its relative simplicity and scalability benefits. This paper proposes a new scheme to provide QoS to mobile network nodes within the NEMO context. The proposed scheme intends to reduce handover latency for the users of MNN as well as alleviates packet losses. The feasibility of the proposed enhancement is assessed by measuring its performance against the native NEMO BS standard protocol using the NS-2 simulator. The obtained results in the simulation study have demonstrated that the proposed scheme outperforms the standard NEMO BS protocol.

Multihoming Support in Mobile IP Networks: Progress, Challenges and Solutions

IP network mobility has already emerged as a key domain of wireless IP networking. The network research community has taken great interest and paid considerable attention to advance IP mobility applications. Accordingly, different advanced networking mechanisms have been considered to optimize IP network mobility. One of these mechanisms is network multi-homing which has been the focus of many IP mobility studies within the academic research and IETF communities. The combination of network mobility and multi-homing has turned into a conceivable approach to effectively deal with expanding system availability and improving the performance of mobile IP network. There are many studies proposed during the recent years to realize network multi-homing for the Network Mobility Basic Support (NEMO BS) protocol, a leading IETF IP mobility protocol. This paper studies and reviews up-to-date research works in supporting multi-homing for NEMO-based mobile IP networks. The aim is to investigate the current state of multi-homing support for NEMO networks and outline recent research directions in this regard.

Design of a Novel Architecture Signaling Network to Provide Internet Multimedia Subsystem Services through Aeronautical Passenger Communication

This article describes a novel architecture signaling network so that an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) user, flying in an aircraft, be able to register with his IMS network of origin and have access to personal services and multimedia, through a Wide-Band Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) link. The proposed architecture integrates the Session Initialization Protocol (SIP), the Network Mobility Basic Support (NEMO BS) protocol and the Mobile Internet Protocol (MIPv6) to enable the usage of IMS services by passenger on board an aircraft, as a type of Aeronautical Passenger Communication (APC) services. In this novel architecture, NEMO and MIPv6 protocols are responsible for the mobility management of smartphones and user notebook and the SIP protocol is responsible for the register and the management of sessions of an IMS user. This novel architecture enables an Air Communication Service Provider (ACSP) be able to supply to an on-board passenger (The IMS user) some APC services through an Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS). The simulation results indicate the accuracy of the proposed architecture into aeronautical scenarios.

Enhanced Fast Handover for Network Mobility in Intelligent Transportation Systems

To maintain the Internet connectivity of a group of nodes in intelligent transportation systems (ITSs), the network mobility basic support (NEMO BS) protocol was standardized. The NEMO BS provides mobility for mobile network nodes (MNNs) in a moving network through a mobile router (MR). Since packet loss in NEMO dramatically increases during a handover as the number of MNNs increases, Mobile IPv6 fast handovers (FMIPv6) was adopted to reduce packet loss and handover latency. However, since FMIPv6 was originally designed for a single mobile node (MN), FMIPv6 based on NEMO (fNEMO) incurs a high tunneling burden on the link between the previous and new access routers (PAR and NAR, respectively). In this paper, we propose an enhanced fNEMO (EfNEMO) as an efficient fast handover scheme that significantly mitigates the tunneling burden and handover latency. In particular, EfNEMO performs a tentative binding update (BU) procedure to register a new care-of address (NCoA) for the MR with the MR's home agent (HA) before the layer-2 handover. Consequently, EfNEMO delivers packets destined for MNNs via various paths between the HA and the NAR without any tunneling. Furthermore, EfNEMO reduces handover latency because it performs the registration to the HA in advance. By establishing an analytical model for the proposed EfNEMO, we investigate the handover performance of NEMO, fNEMO, and EfNEMO. In addition, we compare EfNEMO with NEMO and fNEMO in terms of the overall cost and the handover latency. Simulation is also performed to compare in a more realistic environment. The results of analysis and simulation show that EfNEMO significantly outperforms fNEMO and NEMO.

Evaluation of QoS supported in Network Mobility NEMO environments

Network mobility basic support (NEMO BS) protocol is an entire network, roaming as a unit which changes its point of attachment to the Internet and consequently its reachability in the network topology. NEMO BS doesn't provide QoS guarantees to its users same as traditional Internet IP and Mobile IPv6 as well. Typically, all the users will have same level of services without considering about their application requirements. This poses a problem to real-time applications that required QoS guarantees. To gain more effective control of the network, incorporated QoS is needed. Within QoS-enabled network the traffic flow can be distributed to various priorities. Also, the network bandwidth and resources can be allocated to different applications and users. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working group has proposed several QoS solutions for static network such as IntServ, DiffServ and MPLS. These QoS solutions are designed in the context of a static environment (i.e. fixed hosts and networks). However, they are not fully adapted to mobile environments. They essentially demands to be extended and adjusted to meet up various challenges involved in mobile environments. With existing QoS mechanisms many proposals have been developed to provide QoS for individual mobile nodes (i.e. host mobility). In contrary, research based on the movement of the whole mobile network in IPv6 is still undertaking by the IETF working groups (i.e. network mobility). Few researches have been done in the area of providing QoS for roaming networks. Therefore, this paper aims to review and investigate (previous /and current) related works that have been developed to provide QoS in mobile network. Consequently, a new proposed scheme will be introduced to enhance QoS within NEMO environment, achieving by which seamless mobility to users of mobile network node (MNN).

A proposal to contribute to ITS standardization activity: A valuable network mobility management approach

The introduction of communication services in the demanding ITS scenarios strongly relies on the existence of technologies that enable mobility and security. ITS related standardization bodies, mainly ISO and ETSI, are actively producing and developing new specifications in this regard. In this paper, we study those ITS standards related to security and communication efficiency and analyze the suitability of our NeMHIP protocol, in order to be considered for ITS scenarios. NeMHIP provides secure mobility while at the same time constitutes a framework to protect user data and services. In addition, despite being based on the introduction of a new namespace, its introduction in the current Internet architecture is considered affordable. Aware of the need to satisfy users for having a new technology accepted in a certain scenario, we have also assessed analytically the efficiency of our approach. Specifically, in this paper we analyze and compare the handover signaling delay with the standardized NEMO BS protocol, showing that our approach provides satisfactory results and outperforms it in specific cases. Moreover, we present the results obtained by means of a simulation tool, and show that QoS requirements for the demanding video streaming application are fulfilled. All of these features make our approach a candidate for being considered by standardization organizations and a valuable facility for ensuring secure and efficient communications in the ITS.

Performance evaluation of improved fast PMIPv6-based network mobility for intelligent transportation systems

The network mobility basic support (NEMO BS) protocol has been investigated to provide Internet connectivity for a group of nodes, which is suitable for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) applications. NEMO BS often increases the traffic load and handover latency because it is designed on the basis of mobile Internet protocol version 6 (MIPv6). Therefore, schemes combining proxy MIPv6 with NEMO (P-NEMO) have emerged to solve these problems. However, these schemes still suffer from packet loss and long handover latency during handover. Fast P-NEMO (FP-NEMO) has emerged to prevent these problems. Although the FP-NEMO accelerates handover, it can cause a serious tunneling burden between the mobile access gateways (MAGs) during handover. This problem becomes more critical as the traffic between the MAGs increases. Therefore, we propose a scheme for designing an improved FP-NEMO (IFP-NEMO) to eliminate the tunneling burden by registering a new address in advance. When the registration is completed before the layer 2 handover, the packets are forwarded to the new MAG directly and thereby the IFP-NEMO avoids the use of the tunnel between the MAGs during handover. For the evaluation of the performance of the IFP-NEMO compared with the FP-NEMO, we develop an analytical framework for fast handovers on the basis of P-NEMO. Finally, we demonstrate that the IFP-NEMO outperforms the FP-NEMO through numerical results.

Design and formal security evaluation of NeMHIP: A new secure and efficient network mobility management protocol based on the Host Identity Protocol

NEtwork MObility Basic Support (NEMO BS) is a standardized protocol for managing the mobility of a set of nodes that move together as a whole while having continuous connectivity to the Internet through one or more Mobile Routers (MRs). Because it is based on Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6), it inherits the properties of MIPv6, such as the use of IPsec. However, NEMO BS does not address all the features required by the demanding Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) scenario to provide an integrated and global secure mobility management framework. In addition, unlike MIPv6, the routing in NEMO BS is suboptimal, which makes difficult the provision of an adequate service performance. These characteristics make the application of the NEMO BS protocol not optimum in this scenario. An interesting strategy to provide security and good service performance is to consider a protocol that establishes and maintains Security Associations (SAs), such as the Host Identity Protocol (HIP). Different HIP-based approaches have been defined. However, these HIP-based network mobility solutions still present unsolved issues. In this article, we present a secure and efficient network mobility protocol named NeMHIP. NeMHIP provides secure and optimum mobility management and efficient end-to-end confidentiality and integrity protection apart from the basic security properties inherited from HIP. To evaluate the security provisions of NeMHIP, we have conducted a belief-based formal evaluation. The results demonstrate that the defined security goals are achieved by the protocol. Furthermore, we have performed an automated formal evaluation to validate additional security aspects of NeMHIP. Thus, we have modeled NeMHIP using the AVISPA tool and assessed its security when an intruder is present. The results confirm that NeMHIP is a secure protocol that ensures end-to-end confidentiality and integrity without introducing security leaks to the basic HIP. Thus, we have addressed the need found in the literature for providing security and efficiency in the network mobility scenario.

Seamless Infrastructure Independent Multi Homed NEMO Handoff Using Effective and Timely IEEE 802.21 MIH Triggers

Handoff performance of NEMO BS protocol with existent improvement proposals is still not sufficient for real time and QoS-sensitive applications and further optimizations are needed. When dealing with single homed NEMO, handoff latency and packet loss become irreducible all optimizations included, so that it is impossible to meet requirements of the above applications. Then, How to combine the different Fast handoff approaches remains an open research issue and needs more investigation. In this paper, we propose a new Infrastructure independent handoff approach combining multihoming and intelligent Make-Before-Break Handoff. Based on required Handoff time estimation, L2 and L3 handoffs are initiated using effective and timely MIH triggers, reducing so the anticipation time and increasing the probability of prediction. We extend MIH services to provide tunnel establishment and switching before link break. Thus, the handoff is performed in background with no latency and no packet loss while pingpong scenario is almost avoided. In addition, our proposal saves cost and power consumption by optimizing the time of simultaneous use of multiple interfaces. We provide also NS2 simulation experiments identifying suitable parameter values used for estimation and validating the proposed model

Performance evaluation of user applications in the ITS scenario: An analytical assessment of the NeMHIP

Internet connectivity in the ITS context is a flourishing demand that has to be covered by efficient information and communication technologies. Thanks to the provision of this connectivity, not only end users will profit from communication services, but also services for controlling the operation of the vehicle will benefit from the Internet connectivity. Services related to the operation and control of the vehicles exchange sensitive data, so strong security properties have to be ensured for this type of services. In addition, because of the privacy concerns related to the end users, it is desired to provide this kind of services with an adequate security level. From the communication point of view, a vehicle can be regarded as a mobile network where nodes onboard obtain continuous and optimal Internet connectivity, so, its mobility has to be managed. In the same way, network mobility management protocols should not only avoid security leaks, but also they have to ensure an adequate security level. It is needless to say that the introduction of security properties cannot render not fulfilling service performance requirements. In fact, the trade-off between security and application performance is a must. ITS standardisation bodies have adopted the NEtwork MObility Basic Support (NEMO BS) protocol to manage the mobility of networks. However, it still presents shortcomings like lack of security support and routing problems, which leads to a bad performance. One of the most promising design approaches is to consider a base mobility management protocol that provides out of the box security and route optimisation support like the Host Identity Protocol (HIP). Different solutions based on HIP can be found to solve network mobility in the literature, but none of these solutions aim at solving securely and efficiently network mobility management. That is, the provision of security properties to the network mobility management itself and to the end-to-end data communications while not increasing the signalling overhead and the manageability level remains unsolved. In this paper, we present the NeMHIP. NeMHIP is a secure and efficient network mobility management protocol which is based on HIP. In order to demonstrate its feasibility, we have carried out a study by means of analytical modelling to assess the performance of user applications with stringent QoS requirements like VoIP. Results demonstrate that the introduction of the NeMHIP in the ITS context is feasible because security properties are ensured while application performance requirements are satisfied. Therefore, we successfully achieve the trade-off between security and performance.

An improved network mobility service for intelligent transportation systems

AbstractIn the past few years, the concept of pervasive connectivity has become of crucial importance. New protocols have therefore been standardized to enable IPv6 mobility, such as the Network Mobility Basic Support (NEMO BS) protocol. This protocol is particularly suited for providing a global IPv6 connectivity in intelligent transportation systems. Yet, despite its popularity and maturity, it still suffers from various limitations which prevent its adoption in large‐scale commercial deployments. Among these are operator specific issues such as the lack of practical and efficient bootstrapping procedure. Also, a global connectivity enables the provision of value‐added services whose attractiveness mainly depends on their ease of configuration. In this paper, we focus on solutions to address both the bootstrapping of NEMO BS and service discovery in a mobile environment. By investigating various bootstrapping proposals, we advocate the use of a standardized solution extended with the missing pieces to operate in a NEMO BS environment. We also expose how operator services could be exported and announced in the mobile subnet. Authentication and authorization to access these services are also investigated. Experiments on a prototype show that our proposal brings the missing blocks towards the deployment of network mobility service in intelligent transportation systems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

IP mobility management for vehicular communication networks: challenges and solutions

Vehicular communication networks have emerged as a promising platform for the deployment of safety and infotainment applications. The stack of protocols for vehicular networks will potentially include Network Mobility Basic Support (NEMO BS) to enable IP mobility for infotainment and Internet-based applications. However, the protocol has performance limitations in highly dynamic scenarios, and several route optimization mechanisms have been proposed to overcome these limitations. This article addresses the problem of IP mobility and its specific requirements in vehicular scenarios. A qualitative comparison among the existent IP mobility solutions that optimize NEMO BS in vehicular networks is provided. Their improvements with respect to the current standard, their weaknesses, and their fulfillment of the specific requirements are also identified. In addition, the article describes some of the open research challenges related to IP mobility in vehicular scenarios.

User class mechanisms for quality of service in network mobility

Network mobility basic support (NEMO BS) protocol was introduced by the IETF and allows a mobile network to move and maintain internet sessions. NEMO BS is an extension of mobile IPv6 where the network keeps its home address whilst it is moving. In crowded environments such as trains, the bottleneck is often between the access link and the mobile network. Prioritizing the traffic and allocating a minimum bandwidth guarantee for each user is crucial in this environment. Due to the limited and variable wireless link bandwidth the resource management in mobile network is a challenging problem. A dynamic QoS provisioning framework is designed to provide traffic differentiation according to a user class. Network Simulator, Ns-2 is used to validate the framework and to understand how the mobile network behaves on varies types of applications. Key words: Network mobility, user class, QoS differentiation, wireless network, Ns-2.

Designing and Implementing IPv6 Mobility stack on BSD Operating Systems

Ryuji Wakikawa Kazushi Sugyou Keisuke Uehara Mobile IPv6 and NEMO BS are IETF standard mobility protocols for IPv6. It is said that freely available implementations play a big role in the deployment of new protocols. To accelerate the deployment of IPv6 mobility, we implemented the different mobility protocol stacks for the BSD operating systems. During the development, we made two different implementations based on this different design policies. The first one was an in-kernel implementation and the other a user space implementation. The former design makes it easy to use kernel information necessary for mobility operation, but it is difficult to implement and to extend features than the latter. The latter design needs to have extra mechanisms to retrieve or inject kernel information from user space, but in most cases developing user space programs is easier than developing in the kernel. In this paper, we discuss the design policies and implementation details of these two stacks.

Design and Evaluation of a Novel HIP-Based Network Mobility Protocol

The rapid growth of IP-based mobile telecommunication technologies in the past few years has revealed situations where not only a single node but an entire network moves and changes its point of attachment to the Internet. The main goal of any protocol supporting network mobility is to provide continuous, optimal and secure Internet access to all nodes and even recursively nested mobile subnetworks inside a moving network. For this purpose, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has developed the NEtwork MObility Basic Support (NEMO BS) protocol which extends the operation of Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). In order to bypass the same problems suffered by MIPv6 and NEMO BS, a novel Host Identity Protocol (HIP) extension called HIP-NEMO is introduced, proposed and evaluated in this paper. Our proposal is based on hierarchical topology of mobile RVSs (mRVS), signaling delegation and inter-mRVS communication to enable secure and efficient network mobility support in the HIP layer. The method provides secure connectivity and reachability for every node and nested subnet in the moving network and supports multihomed scenarios as well. Moreover, HIPNEMO reduces signaling and packet overhead during network mobility management by achieving route optimization inside any moving network even in nested scenarios. To evaluate the proposed scheme we present a simulation model implemented in OMNeT++ and discuss the results of our simulation based analysis to show the efficiency of the approach compared to the NEMO BS protocol formulated by the IETF.

Operational Experiment of Seamless Handover of a Mobile Router using Multiple Care-of Address Registration

NEMO Basic Support (NEMO BS) adds a mobility function to IPv6 routers, such a router is called as a mobile router. The network behind the mobile router (mobile network) becomes logically static. This function is considered useful when a network has a lot of nodes that do not have a mobility function but move with the network. The typical usage of this technology is the network provided in a transportation system like a bus or airplane. In the base specification of NEMO BS, a mobile router can use one IPv6 address as its attachment point at one time. Therefore, the mobile router and its mobile network will face service disruption of network connectivity while the mobile router is moving from one network to other network. In this paper, we explain two operational experiments of network mobility. One is an experiment using only the base NEMO BS function. The other is an experiment of seamless handover using multiple network interfaces to solve the problem. In these experiments, the mobile networks were actual conference networks which held a few hundred people. The result shows that the multiple interfaces usage provides one-third to one-tenth of the packet loss rate compared to the case that is not using the technology. Also most attendees of the conference did not notice the movement, which means the technology can be used for the realistic solution for the seamless handover.