Recent Developments with Mobile IPv6

Abstract

In the future, the Internet will be largely wireless and mobile. Soon, there will be a billion mobile devices on earth. IPv6 addressability is needed to support this gigantic number of wireless devices. Device mobility a.ects every layer of the protocol stack. This talk concentrates on MobileIPv6 which offers the necessary network layer support. TCP, the protocol used by the underlying transport layer, expects both ends of a TCP connection (session) to keep the same IP addresses for the life of the session. This is the home address used for end-to-end routing. IP, on the other hand, needs to change the IP address when a node moves to a new place in the network. This is the care-of-address used for routing. Mobile IP considers the mobility problem as a routing problem managing a binding; that is, a dynamic association between a care-ofaddress and a home address. This binding enables tunneling from the home network to the mobile device, which is addressable at the careof address when it is not on its home network. In this way, Mobile IP supports seamless roaming. Of course, there is more to MobileIPv6 than this basic functionality. For instance, it supports establishment of optimal bidirectional connections between a mobile device and any other IPv6 network device.

In order to make the tunneling and route establishment as secure as staying on a single network, a great amount effort has gone into ensuring scalable security of Mobile IPv6, compared to MobileIPv4. Further developments include better support for smooth handovers, and improved handling of local context information associated with access controls, header compression, quality of service, and other contexts associated with the mobile device’s connection.

This talk gives an overview of the current state of Mobile IPv6. After explaining the technical concepts underlying the features which are important for mobility management, the current status of the protocol and implementations will also be discussed.