Mobile IP

Home Agent - Foreign Agent

Mobile Node

  

 The Mobile IP Protocol

Mobile IP provides an efficient and scalable mechanism for mobility within the Internet.
It is designed to help organizations easily enable their customers to benefit from seamless
mobility between different networks in the entire Internet-connected world.

An increasing amount of Inter-

net users take advantage of
wireless technology when accessing the
Home Agent in each such device’s home
network. Optionally, a Foreign Agent
may be present in the network the de-
Integrated with IPNET
Interpeak Mobile IP is fully integrated
with Interpeak’s IPv4/IPv6 TCP/IP
Internet. This gives great benefits, but vice is visiting. Both Home Agents and stack IPNET. Consequently, no addi-
also has the drawback that connections Foreign Agents normally reside within tional programming is required to get
are lost whenever a user moves to a new routers in their network. a Mobile IP solution up and running.
network. Mobile IP is the Internet When a mobile device visits another The Mobile IP components listen
standard for allowing users to seamlessly network, IP datagrams destined for the to both ICMP router advertisements
roam among wireless networks. Using device are intercepted by its Home and routing socket message from
Mobile IP, applications such as Internet Agent and tunneled to the visited net- IPNET, allowing for fully automatic
telephony, media streaming and virtual work using a temporary IP address. If operation with no user handling re-
private networking can be supported there is a Foreign Agent on the visited quired once initially configured. If
without service interruption when us- network, it receives the tunneled pack- manual intervention is required, the
ers move across network boundries. ets, unpacks them and forwards them mobile IP modules may be shutdown,
Interpeak’s Mobile IP products are to the Mobile Node; otherwise, the Mo- reconfigured or restarted using either a
compliant with the WiMAX Forum bile Node itself receives the tunneled function API or simple shell command.
standards for mobility in WiMAX net- packets and unpacks them. Finally, the
works, and the 3GPP2/3GPP standards Mobile Node reinserts the original Supports Industry-Standard
for 3G cellular networks. In addition, datagrams into the stack, resulting in a RTOSs and Native Linux
the products implement Fast Handover transparent operation using only the Interpeak Mobile IP can be used with
("make-before-break") for the support original IP addresses. the entire range of industry-standard
of Voice-over-IP and other real-time ap- Replies to the originating host can RTOSs supported by IPNET, such as
plications. either be sent directly from the Mobile INTEGRITY, OSE, VxWorks, Nu-
Node to the host, or tunneled back to cleus, and ITRON. It also supports all
Operation the Home Agent, which in turn un- distributions of the Linux operating sys-
Mobile IP support requires a Mobile packs and forwards the replies to the tem with version 2.4 or 2.6 kernels.
Node in each mobile device and a host.

The Home Agent intercepts The Mobile Node The Foreign Agent
The Home Agent intercepts
datagrams for the Mobile sends its replies unpacks the original
datagrams for the Mobile
Node and tunnels them using directly to the host datagrams and sends
Node and tunnels them using
a temporary IP address. using standard them to the Mobile Node The Mobile Node
a temporary IP address.
Internet mechanisms. on the local network. sends its replies
Internet directly to the host
2 using standard
2
mechanisms.
IPIP Tunnel 3
IPIP Tunnel
Mobile Node
Home Agent
Home Agent Foreign Agent
3
1 Mobile Node
1 4

IP host
IP host

Mobile IP datagram flow in a network without a In a visited network that contains a Foreign Agent, the Mobile
Foreign Agent. This requires the Mobile Node to Node does not require any IP address. Furthermore, the Foreign
have a public IP address in the visited network. Agent only requires one public IP address for all Mobile Nodes.
 Interpeak Mobile IP Features
Configuration
The Interpeak Mobile IP components • Fully RFC compliant Mobile IP Home Agent,
can be configured at both build-time Foreign Agent and Mobile Node.
and run-time. Only minimal configu- • Compliant with the WiMAX Forum and the
ration is required to get them up and 3GPP/3GPP2 standards for mobility.
running. Configuration parameters for • Delivered in ANSI C source code.
advanced operation can be left at their • Build-time and run-time configuration.
default values and revisited if required • Optional co-located IP address support.
at a later time. Regardless what configu- • MD5 authentication and integrity checks.
ration needs to be changed, the mobile • Replay protection using timestamps.
components can be reconfigured in • IPIP and GRE tunneling support.
runtime and then restarted using a sin- • Support for reverse tunneling.
gle function call or shell command. • Fast Handover ("make-before-break") to
support Voice-over-IP.
Tunneling
IP datagrams to the mobile node are Interpeak Mobile IP features.
tunneled from the home network by the
Home Agent to the Foreign Agent or the mobile node are discarded. The so- work. More specifically, the secret is
Mobile Node directly. IP in IP tun- lution is to also tunnel and forward used with keyed MD5 in prefix + suf-
neling, defined by RFC 2003, is the datagrams originating from the mobile fix mode to create a 128-bit message
default and mandatory tunneling pro- node through the home agent. This digest of the complete registration mes-
tocol and is supported by Interpeak’s mode of operation is called Reverse sage, not only serving to verify the
Mobile IP products. Generic Routing Tunneling (RFC 3024) and is also sup- sender but also protect the message
Encapsulation (GRE), an optional ported by Interpeak's implementation. from alterations.
tunneling method that can be used with Replay protection is realized with
Mobile IP, is also supported. Mobile IP Security timestamps. The optional Reverse
NAT support according to RFC 3519 Registration messages exchanged be- Tunneling feature may be utilized if
“Mobile IP Traversal of Network Ad- tween Mobile Nodes, Foreign Agents firewalls are used. A positive side effect
dress Translation (NAT) Devices” is and Home Agents are always authenti- of reverse tunneling is that the wherea-
available upon request. cated through the use of a shared se- bouts of the mobile node are hidden
cret, which is never sent over the net- from the hosts it communicates with.
Reverse Tunneling
The default operation with Mobile IP
is to send packets from a mobile device
to a host directly using standard IP • RFC 1256 ICMP Router Discovery Messages
routing, i.e. without tunneling or pass- • RFC 2003 IP Encapsulation within IP
ing the datagram through the Home • RFC 2004 Minimal Encapsulation within IP
Agent. The effect is a triangular rout- • RFC 2104 HMAC: Keyed-Hashing for Message
ing pattern where the host sends its Authentication
datagrams to the Home Agent, which • RFC 2784 Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)
in turn tunnels them to the Foreign • RFC 2794 Mobile IP Network Access Identifier Extension
Agent or directly to the Mobile Node. for IPv4
Finally, the Mobile Node sends its • RFC 3012 Mobile IPv4 Challenge/Response Extensions
• RFC 3024 Reverse Tunneling for Mobile IP, revised
datagrams directly to the original host,
• RFC 3344 IP Mobility Support for IPv4
resulting in the triangle.
• RFC 3846 Mobile IPv4 Extension for Carrying
However, due to various security
Network Access Identifiers
mechanisms like ingress filtering and
firewalls, this mode of operation may
not work because the datagrams from Interpeak Mobile IP supported RFCs.
 Interpeak Secure Networking Software
Interpeak provides state-of-the-art networking solutions specifically designed for
embedded systems. The company´s embedded networking and security software
is currently used in thousands of applications across the globe.
Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Interpeak operates through a global
network of distribution channels and has its own sales and field application force
dispersed in strategic locations worldwide, including the USA, Europe, and Asia.
For additional information, please visit our homepage www.interpeak.com.

All Interpeak products are trademarks or registered trademarks of Interpeak AB. Other brand and product
names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. The information in this docu-
ment has been carefully reviewed, and is believed to be accurate and reliable. However, Interpeak AB
assumes no liabilities for inaccuracies in this document. Furthermore, Interpeak AB reserves the right to
change specifications embodied in this document without prior notice.
Version 1.37-r5. Copyright © 2005, Interpeak AB. All rights reserved.