Mobile IP

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Mobile IP (or MIP) is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard

Internet protocol suite

BGP
DHCP

DNS

FTP

HTTP

IMAP

LDAP

MGCP

NNTP

NTP

POP

ONC/RPC

RTP

RTSP

RIP

SIP

SMTP

SNMP

SSH
Telnet
TLS/SSL

XMPP

more...
Transport layer

TCP

UDP

DCCP

SCTP

RSVP

more...

Internet layer

IP

IPv4

IPv6

ICMP

ICMPv6

ECN

IGMP

IPsec

more...
Link layer

ARP

NDP

OSPF

Tunnels

L2TP

PPP
MAC
Ethernet

DSL

ISDN

FDDI

more...

Contents
[hide]

1Introduction

2Applications

3Operational principles

4Performance

5Development
o

5.1Changes in IPv6 for Mobile IPv6

7See also

8References

9External links

Introduction[edit]
The Mobile IP allows for location-independent routing of IP datagrams on the Internet. Each
mobile node is identified by its home address disregarding its current location in the Internet.
While away from its home network, a mobile node is associated with a care-of address which
identifies its current location and its home address is associated with the local endpoint of a
tunnel to its home agent. Mobile IP specifies how a mobile node registers with its home agent
and how the home agent routes datagrams to the mobile node through the tunnel.

Applications[edit]
In many applications (e.g., VPN, VoIP), sudden changes in network connectivity and IP address
can cause problems. Mobile IP was designed to support seamless and continuous Internet
connectivity.
Mobile IP is most often found in wired and wireless environments where users need to carry their
mobile devices across multiple LAN subnets. Examples of use are in roaming between
overlapping wireless systems, e.g., IP over DVB, WLAN, WiMAX and BWA.
Mobile IP is not required within cellular systems such as 3G, to provide transparency when
Internet users migrate between cellular towers, since these systems provide their own data link
layer handover and roaming mechanisms. However, it is often used in 3G systems to allow
seamless IP mobility between different packet data serving node (PDSN) domains.

Operational principles[edit]
The goal of IP Mobility is to maintain the TCP connection between a mobile host and a static host
while reducing the effects of location changes while the mobile host is moving around, without
having to change the underlying TCP/IP.[1] To solve the problem, the RFC allows for a kind of
proxy agent to act as a middle-manbetween a mobile host and a correspondent host.
A mobile node has two addresses a permanent home address and a care-of address (CoA),
which is associated with the network the mobile node is visiting. Two kinds of entities comprise a
Mobile IP implementation:

A home agent (HA) stores information about mobile nodes whose permanent home
address is in the home agent's network. The HA acts as a router on a mobile host's (MH)
home network which tunnels datagrams for delivery to the MH when it is away from home,
maintains a location directory (LD) for the MH.

A foreign agent (FA) stores information about mobile nodes visiting its network. Foreign
agents also advertise care-of addresses, which are used by Mobile IP. If there is no foreign
agent in the host network, the mobile device has to take care of getting an address and
advertising that address by its own means. The FA acts as a router on a MHs visited
network which provides routing services to the MH while registered. FA detunnels and
delivers datagrams to the MH that were tunneled by the MHs HA

The so-called Care of Address is a termination point of a tunnel toward a MH, for datagrams
forwarded to the MH while it is away from home.

Foreign agent care-of address: the address of a foreign agent that MH registers with

co-located care-of address: an externally obtained local address that a MH gets.

Mobile Nodes (MN) are responsible for discovering whether it is connected to its home network
or has moved to a foreign network. HAs and FAs broadcast their presence on each network to
which they are attached. They are not solely responsible for discovery, they only play a part. RFC
2002 specified that MN use agent discovery to locate these entities. When connected to a foreign
network, a MN has to determine the foreign agent care-of-address being offered by each foreign
agent on the network.
A node wanting to communicate with the mobile node uses the permanent home address of the
mobile node as the destination address to send packets to. Because the home address logically
belongs to the network associated with the home agent, normal IP routing mechanisms forward
these packets to the home agent. Instead of forwarding these packets to a destination that is
physically in the same network as the home agent, the home agent redirects these packets
towards the remote address through an IP tunnel by encapsulating the datagram with a new IP
header using the care of address of the mobile node.
When acting as transmitter, a mobile node sends packets directly to the other communicating
node, without sending the packets through the home agent, using its permanent home address
as the source address for the IP packets. This is known as triangular routing or "route
optimization" (RO) mode. If needed, the foreign agent could employ reverse tunneling by
tunneling the mobile node's packets to the home agent, which in turn forwards them to the
communicating node. This is needed in networks whose gateway routers check that the source
IP address of the mobile host belongs to their subnet or discard the packet otherwise. In Mobile
IPv6 (MIPv6), "reverse tunneling" is the default behaviour, with RO being an optional behaviour.
In scenarios when both sides of communication are mobile nodes, communicating via Mobile IP
solutions adds additional overhead that decreases efficient packet payloads. As a solution, In
2012 researchers developed a method [2] to decrease the size of overhead in situations, so that
more payloads can be transferred in each IP packet in the discussed scenarios. In the proposed
method, the tunnel manager is changed to act as a DNS, so that sending MN addresses are no
longer required.

Performance[edit]
A performance evaluation of Mobile IPv6, carried out by NEC Europe, can be found at the ACM
Digital Library, under the entry "A simulation study on the performance of mobile IPv6 in a WLANbased cellular network", from the Elsevier Computer Networks Journal (CNJ), special issue on
The New Internet Architecture, September 2002.
Additionally, a performance comparison between Mobile IPv6 and some of its proposed
enhancements (Hierarchical Mobile IPv6, Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6 and their Combination)
is available under the entry "A performance comparison of Mobile IPv6, Hierarchical Mobile IPv6,
fast handovers for Mobile IPv6 and their combination", from the ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile
Computing and Communications Review (MC2R), Volume 7, Issue 4, October, 2003.

Development[edit]
Enhancements to the Mobile IP technique, such as Mobile IPv6[3] and Hierarchical Mobile IPv6
(HMIPv6) defined in RFC 5380,[4] are being developed to improve mobile communications in
certain circumstances by making the processes more secure and more efficient. HMIPv6
explanation can be found at Hierarchical-Mobile-IPv6.
Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6 is described in IETF RFC 5568.
Researchers create support for mobile networking without requiring any pre-deployed
infrastructure as it currently is required by MIP. One such example isInteractive Protocol for
Mobile Networking (IPMN) which promises supporting mobility on a regular IP network just from
the network edges by intelligent signalling between IP at end-points and application layer module
with improved quality of service.

Researchers are also working to create support for mobile networking between entire subnets
with support from Mobile IPv6. One such example is Network Mobility (NEMO) Network Mobility
Basic Support Protocol by the IETF Network Mobility Working Group which supports mobility for
entire Mobile Networks that move and to attach to different points in the Internet. The protocol is
an extension of Mobile IPv6 and allows session continuity for every node in the Mobile Network
as the network moves.

Changes in IPv6 for Mobile IPv6 [edit]

A set of mobility options to include in mobility messages

A new Home Address option for the Destination Options header

A new Type 2 Routing header

New Internet Control Message Protocol for IPv6 (ICMPv6) messages to discover the set
of home agents and to obtain the prefix of the home link

Changes to router discovery messages and options and additional Neighbor Discovery
options

Foreign Agents are no longer needed

Definition of terms[edit]
Home network
The home network of a mobile device is the network within which the device receives its
identifying IP address (home address).
Home address
The home address of a mobile device is the IP address assigned to the device within its
home network.
Foreign network
A foreign network is the network in which a mobile node is operating when away from its
home network.
Care-of address
The care-of address of a mobile device is the network-native IP address of the device
when operating in a foreign network.
Home agent
A home agent is a router on a mobile nodes home network which tunnels datagrams for
delivery to the mobile node when it is away from home. It maintains current location (IP
address) information for the mobile node. It is used with one or more foreign agents.
Foreign agent
A foreign agent is a router that stores information about mobile nodes visiting its network.
Foreign agents also advertise care-of-addresses which are used by Mobile IP.
Binding
A binding is the association of the home address with a care-of address.