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ABSTRACT
Many organizations utilize traditional wire-based networking technologies to
establish connections among computers. These technologies fall into the following three
main categories namely LAN, MAN & WAN.
These traditional networking technologies offer tremendous capabilities from an
office, hotel room, or home. Activities such as communicating via e- mail with someone
located in a faraway town or conveniently accessing product information from the World
Wide Web are the result of widespread networking. But limitations to networking
through the wire-based system exist because you can not utilize these network services
unless you are physically connected to a LAN or a telephone system.
Wireless networks are stretching their legs day by day. With the increasing no. of
mobile users wireless technology has become inevitable. Wireless networking is the first
step towards the mobile communication system. As for wireless networking we use
certain protocols for the communication thus definitely we need protocols for mobile
communication. These protocols as in wireless networks are called Mobile IP or Mobile
Internet Protocol.
The day will arrive, hastened by Mobile IP, when no person will ever feel ―lost‖
or out of touch. As people move from place to place with their laptop, keeping connected
to the network can become a challenging and sometimes frustrating and expensive
proposition. The goal is that with widespread deployment of the mobile networking
technologies described here automatic communicatio ns with globally inter-connected
computing resources will be considered as natural for people on the move as it is for
people sitting at a high performance workstation in their office. In the near future
communicating via laptop should be as natural as using telephone.
Although the Internet offers access to information sources worldwide, typically
we do not expect to benefit from that access until we arrive at some familiar point --
whether home, office, or school. However, the increasing variety of wireless devices
offering IP connectivity, such as personal digital assistants, handhelds, and digital cellular
phones, is beginning to change our perceptions of the Internet.
1. Agent Discovery: The process by which a Mobile node determines its current location
and obtains the care of address.
2. Registration: The process by which a Mobile node request service from a foreign
agent on foreign link and informs its home agent of its current care-off address.
3. Tunneling: The specific mechanism by which packets are routed to and from a
Mobile node that is connected to a foreign link.
Mobile Computing is becoming increasingly important due to the rise in the
number of portable computers and the desire to have continuous network connectivity to
the Internet irrespective of the physical location of the node. The Internet infrastructure is
built on top of a collection of protocols, called the TCP/IP protocol suite. Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) are the core protocols in this suite. IP
requires the location of any host connected to the Internet to be uniquely identified by an
assigned IP address. This raises one of the most important issues in mobility, because
when a host moves to another physical location, it has to change its IP address. However,
the higher level protocols require IP address of a host to be fixed for identifying
connections.
The Mobile Internet Protocol (Mobile IP) is an extension to the Internet Protocol
proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that addresses this issue. It
enables mobile computers to stay connected to the Internet regardless of their location
and without changing their IP address.
Mobile IP specifies enhancements that allow transparent routing of IP datagrams
to mobile nodes in the Internet. Each mobile node is always identified by its home
address, regardless of its current point of attachment to the Internet. While situated away
from its home, a mobile node is also associated with a care-of address, which provides
information about its current point of attachment to the Internet. The protocol provides
for registering the care-of address with a home agent. The home agent sends datagrams
destined for the mobile node through a tunnel to the care-of address. After arriving at the
end of the tunnel, each datagram is then delivered to the mobile node.
Regardless of the movement between different networks connectivity at the
different points is achieved easily. Roaming from a wired network to wireless or wide
area network is also done with ease. Mobile IP is a part of both IPV4 and IPV6.
The description of the core differences between the present protocol Ipv4 and the
future protocol Ipv6 such as scalability, security, realtimeness, Plug and Play, C lear spec.
and optimizations are looked. Covered next is the difference between the headers
schemes of the IPV4 the currently used Protocol Vs IPV6 the up-coming sensation in the
Internet World. Well you are using it then you should be aware of what are the
advantages of the thing and thus here it covers the Advantages of IPV6 over IPV4.
INDEX
TOPIC PAGE NO
1. INTRODUCTION 1
2. MOBILE IP OVERVIEW 3
3. TERMINOLOGY 5
4. PROTOCOL OVERVIEW 6
7. SECURITY 16
12. CONCLUSION 26
1. INTRODUCTION
The exponential growth of the Internet and the inexorable increase in native
computing power of laptop computers and other digital wireless data communication
devices has brought the need for mobile networking into sharp focus. As network
services proliferate and become available ubiquitously, every network device will take
advantage of mobile networking technology to offer maximum flexibility to the
customers needing those devices.
To understand the contrast between the current realities of IP connectivity and
future possibilities, consider the transition toward mobility that has occurred in telephony
over the past 20 years. An analogous transition in the domain of networking, from
dependence on fixed points of attachment to the flexibility afforded by mobility, has just
begun.
As PDAs and the next generation of data-ready cellular phones become more
widely deployed, a greater degree of connectivity is almost becoming a necessity for the
business user on the go. Data connectivity solutions for this group of users are a very
different requirement than it is for the fixed dialup user or the stationary wired LAN user.
Solutions here need to deal with the challenge of movement during a data session or
conversation. Cellular service providers and network administrators wanting to deploy
wireless LAN technologies need to have a solution which will grant this greater freedom
Cisco IOS has integrated new technology into our routing platforms to meet these
new networking challenges. Mobile IP is a tunneling-based solution which takes
advantage of the Cisco-created GRE tunneling technology, as well as simpler IP- in-IP
tunneling protocol. This tunneling enables a router on a user’s home subnet to intercept
and transparently forward IP packets to users while they roam beyond traditional network
boundaries. This solution is a key enabler of wireless mobility, both in the wireless LAN
arena, such as the 802.11 standard, and in the cellular environment for packet-based data
offerings which offer connectivity to a user’s home network and the Internet.
Mobile IP provides users the freedom to roam beyond their home subnet while
consistently maintaining their home IP address. This enables transparent routing of IP
data grams to mobile users during their movement, so that data sessions can be initiated
to them while they roam; it also enables sessions to be maintained in spite of physical
movement between points of attachment to the Internet or other networks. Cisco’s
implementation of Mobile IP is fully compliant with the Internet Engineering Task
Force’s (IETF’s) proposed standard defined in Request for Comments.
Mobile computing and networking should not be confused with the portable
computing and networking we have today. In mobile networking, computing activities
are not disrupted when the user changes the computer's point of attachment to the
Internet. Instead, all the needed reconnection occurs automatically and non-interactively.
Truly mobile computing offers many advantages. Confident access to the Internet
anytime, anywhere will help free us from the ties that bind us to our desktops. Consider
how cellular phones have given people new freedom in carrying out their work. Taking
along an entire computing environment has the potential not just to extend that flexibility
but to fundamentally change the existing work ethic.
The evolution of mobile networking will differ from that of telephony in some
important respects. The endpoints of a telephone connection are typically human;
computer applications are likely to involve interactions between machines without human
intervention. Obvious examples of this are mobile computing devices on airplanes, ships,
and automobiles. Mobile networking may well also come to depend on position-finding
devices, such as a satellite global positioning system, to work in tandem with wireless
access to the Internet.
However, there are still some technical obstacles that must be overcome before
mobile networking can become widespread. The most fundamental is the way the
Internet Protocol, the protocol that connects the networks of today's Internet, routes
packets to their destinations according to IP addresses. These addresses are associated
with a fixed network location much as a non- mobile phone number is associated with a
physical jack in a wall. When the packet's destination is a mobile node, this means that
each new point of attachment made by the node is associated with a new network number
and, hence, a new IP address, making transparent mobility impossible.
Network mobility is enabled by Mobile IP, which provides a scalable, transparent,
and secure solution. It is scalable because only the participating components need to be
Mobile IP aware—the Mobile Node and the endpoints of the tunnel. No other routers in
the network or any hosts with which the Mobile Node is communicating need to be
changed or even aware of the movement of the Mobile Node. It is transparent to any
applications while providing mobility. Also, the network layer provides link- layer
independence; interlink layer roaming, and link-layer transparency. Finally, it is secure
because the set up of packet redirection is authenticated.
2. Mobile IP Overview
In IP networks, routing is based on stationary IP addresses, similar to how a postal
letter is delivered to the fixed address on the envelope. A device on a network is
reachable through normal IP routing by the IP address it is assigned on the network.
The problem occurs when a device roams away from its home network and is no
longer reachable using normal IP routing. This results in the active sessions of the device
being terminated. Mobile IP was created to enable users to keep the same IP address
while traveling to a different network (which may even be on a different wireless
operator), thus ensuring that a roaming individual could continue communication without
sessions or connections being dropped. Because the mobility functions of Mobile IP are
performed at the network layer rather than the physical layer, the mobile device can span
different types of wireless and wire line networks while maintaining connections and
ongoing applications. Remote login, remote printing, and file transfers are some
examples of applications where it is undesirable to interrupt communications while an
individual roams across network boundaries. Also, certain network services, such as
software licenses and access privileges, are based on IP addresses. Changing these IP
addresses could compromise the network services.
This section discusses the main concepts and operations of the IETF Mobile IP
protocol. The basic protocol procedures fall into the following areas:
Advertisement.
Registration
Tunneling
Mobile IP is a modification to IP that allows nodes to continue to receive
datagrams no matter where they happen to be attached to the Internet. It involves some
additional control messages that allow the IP nodes involved to manage their IP routing
tables reliably. Scalability has been a dominant design factor during the development of
Mobile IP, because in the future a high percentage of the nodes attached to the Internet
will be capable of mobility.
As explained in the previous section, IP assumes that a node’s network address
uniquely identifies the node’s point of attachment to the Internet. Therefore, a node must
be located on the network indicated by its IP address to receive datagrams destined to it;
otherwise, datagrams destined to the node would be undeliverable. Without Mobile IP,
one of the two following mechanisms must be typically employed for a node to change
its point of attachment without losing the ability to communicate:
The node must change its IP address whenever it changes its point of attachment.
Host-specific routes must be propagated throughout the relevant portion of the Internet
routing infrastructure.
Both these alternatives are plainly unacceptable in the general ca se. The first
makes it impossible for a node to maintain transport and higher layer connections when
the node changes location. The second has obvious and severe scaling problems that are
especially relevant considering the explosive growth in sales of notebook (mobile)
computers.
Mobile IP was devised to meet the following goals for mobile nodes that move
(that is, change their point of attachment to the Internet) more frequently than once per
second. The following five characteristics should be considered baseline requirements to
be satisfied be any candidate for a mobile IP protocol:
A mobile node must be able to communicate with other nodes after changing its link-
layer point of attachment to the Internet, yet without changing its IP address.
A mobile node must be able to communicate with other nodes that do not implement
Mobile IP.
All messages used to transmit information to another node about the location of a
mobile node must be authenticated to protect against remote redirection attacks.
The link by which a mobile node is directly attached to the Internet may often be a
wireless link. This link may thus have a substantially lower bandwidth and higher error
rate than the traditional wired networks. Moreover, mobile nodes are likely to be battery
powered, and minimizing power consumption is important. Therefore, the number of
administrative messages sent over the link by which a mobile node is directly connected
to the Internet should be minimized, and the size of these messages should be kept as
small as possible.
Mobile IP must place no additional constraints on the assignment of IP addresses.
3. Terminology
4. Protocol Overview
With these operations in mind, a rough outline of the operation of the Mobile IP protocol
follows:
1. Mobility agents (that is, foreign agents and home agents) advertise their presence via
agent advertisement messages. A mobile node may optionally solicit an a gent
advertisement message from any local mobility agents by using an agent solicitation
message.
2. A mobile node receives an agent advertisement and determines whether it is on its
home network or a foreign network.
3. When the mobile node detects that it is located on its home network, it operates
without mobility services. If returning to its home network from being registered
elsewhere, the mobile node deregisters with its home agent through a variation of the
normal registration process.
4. When the mobile node detects that it has moved to a foreign network, it obtains a care
of address on the foreign network. The care-of address can either be a foreign agent care-
of address or a collocated care-of address.
5. The mobile node, operating away from home, then registers its new care-of address
with its home agent through the exchange of a registration request and registration reply
message, possibly by way of a foreign agent.
6. Datagrams sent to the mobile node’s home address are intercepted by its home agent,
tunneled by the home agent to the mobile node’s care-of address, received at the tunnel
endpoint (either at a foreign agent or at the mobile node itself), and finally delivered to
the mobile node.
7. In the reverse direction, datagrams sent by the mobile node may be delivered to their
destination using standard IP routing mechanisms, without necessarily passing through
the home agent.
Figure 2 illustrates the routing of datagrams to and from a mobile node away from
home, once the mobile node has registered with its home agent. In this figure, the mobile
node is using a foreign agent care-of address as follows:
1. A datagram to the mobile node arrives on the home network via standard IP routing.
2. The datagram is intercepted by the home agent and is tunneled to the care-of address.
3. The datagram is detunneled and delivered to the mobile node.
4. For datagrams sent by the mobile node, standard IP routing delivers each datagram to
its destination. In Figure 2, the foreign agent is the mobile node’s default router.
The type indicates the particular type of extension. The length of the extension,
counted in bytes – or, more technically in octets, which are groups of 8 bits – does not
include the type and length bytes, and may be zero or greater. The type and length fields
determine the format of the data field. Extensions allow variable amounts of information
to be carried within each message. The total length of IP datagram determines the end of
the list of extensions.
Two separately maintained sets of numbering spaces, from which extension type
values are allocated, are used in Mobile IP. The first set consists of those extensions that
may appear in Mobile IP control messages (those sent to and from UDP port number
434). Currently, the following types are defined for extensions appearing in Mobile IP
registration messages:
The second set consists of those extensions that may appear in ICMP router
discovery messages. Currently, Mobile IP defines the following types for such
extensions:
Up-to-date values for these extension type numbers are specified in the most
recent list of Assigned Numbers form the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
Since these sets of extensions are independent, it is conceivable that two unrelated
extensions that are defined at a later date could have identical type values. One of the
extensions could have identical type values. One of the extensions could be used only in
Mobile IP control messages and the other only in ICMP router discovery messages.
The value of the extension number is important when trying to determine the
correct disposition of unrecognized extensions. When an extension numbered in either of
these sets within the range 0 through 127 is encountered but not recognized, the message
containing that extension is required to be silently discarded. When an extension
numbered in the range 128 through 255 is encountered but unrecognized, that particular
extension is ignored, but the rest of the extensions and message data are still required to
be processed. The length field of the extension is used to skip the data field in searching
for the next extension.
The Mobile Node is a device such as a cell phone, personal digital assistant, or
laptop whose software enables network roaming capabilities.
The Home Agent is a router on the home network serving as the anchor point for
communication with the Mobile Node; it tunnels packets from a device on the Internet,
called a Correspondent Node, to the roaming Mobile Node. (A tunnel is established
between the Home Agent and a reachable point for the Mobile Node in the foreign
network.)
The Foreign Agent is a router that may function as the point of attachment for the
Mobile Node when it roams to a foreign network, delivering packets from the Home
Agent to the Mobile Node.
The care-of address is the termination point of the tunnel toward the Mobile Node
when it is on a foreign network. The Home Agent maintains an association between the
home IP address of the Mobile Node and its care-of address, which is the current location
of the Mobile Node on the foreign or visited network
6.2 Registration
The Mobile Node is configured with the IP address and mobility security
association (which includes the shared key) of its Home Agent. In addition, the Mobile
Node is configured with either its home IP address, or another user identifier, such as a
Network Access Identifier.
The Mobile Node uses this information along with the information that it learns
from the Foreign Agent advertisements to form a Mobile IP registration request. It adds
the registration request to its pending list and sends the registration request to its Home
Agent either through the Foreign Agent or directly if it is using a colocated care-of
address and is not required to register through the Foreign Agent. If the registration
request is sent through the Foreign Agent, the Foreign Agent checks the validity of the
registration request, which includes checking that the requested lifetime does not exceed
its limitations, the requested tunnel encapsulation is available, and that reverse tunnel is
supported. If the registration request is valid, the Foreign Agent adds the visiting Mobile
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Node to its pending list before relaying the request to the Home Agent. If the registration
request is not valid, the Foreign Agent sends a registration reply with appropriate error
code to the Mobile Node.
The Home Agent checks the validity of the registration request, which includes
authentication of the Mobile Node. If the registration request is valid, the Home Agent
creates a mobility binding (an association of the Mobile Node with its care-of address), a
tunnel to the care-of address, and a routing entry for forwarding packets to the home
address through the tunnel.
The Home Agent then sends a registration reply to the Mobile Node through the
Foreign Agent (if the registration request was received via the Foreign Agent) or directly
to the Mobile Node. If the registration request is not valid, the Home Agent rejects the
request by sending a registration reply with an appropriate error code.
The Foreign Agent checks the validity of the registration reply, including ensuring that an
associated registration request exists in its pending list. If the registration reply is valid,
the Foreign Agent adds the Mobile Node to its visitor list, establishes a tunnel to the
Home Agent, and creates a routing entry for forwarding packets to the home address. It
then relays the registration reply to the Mobile Node.
Finally, the Mobile Node checks the validity of the registration reply, which
includes ensuring an associated request is in its pending list as well as proper
authentication of the Home Agent. If the registration reply is not valid, the Mobile Node
discards the reply. If a valid registration reply specifies that the registration is accepted,
the Mobile Node is confirmed that the mobility agents are aware of its roaming. In the
colocated care-of address case, it adds a tunnel to the Home Agent. Subsequently, it
sends all packets to the Foreign Agent.
The Mobile Node reregisters before its registration lifetime expires. The Home
Agent and Foreign Agent update their mobility binding and visitor entry, respectively,
during registration. In the case where the registration is denied, the Mobile Node makes
the necessary adjustments and attempts to register again.
For example, if the registration is denied because of time mismatch and the Home Agent
sends back its time stamp for synchronization, the Mobile Node adjusts the time stamp in
future registration requests.
Thus, a successful Mobile IP registration sets up the routing mechanism for
transporting packets to and from the Mobile Node as it roams.
6.3 Tunneling
Mobile IP requires the use of encapsulation to deliver datagrams from the home
network to the current location of the mobile node (its care-of address). In the most
general encapsulation (tunneling) case, illustrated in Figure 4. The source, encapsulator,
decapsulator, and destination are separate nodes. The encapsulator node is considered the
entry point of the tunnel, and the decapsulator node is considered the exit point of the
tunnel. Multiple source-destination pairs can use the same tunnel between the
encapsulator and the decapsulator.
Mobile IP requires each agent and foreign agent to support tunneling datagrams
using IP-in-IP encapsulation. Any mobile node that uses a collocated care-of address is
required to support receiving datagrams tunneled using IP- in-IP encapsulation.
The Mobile Node sends packets using its home IP address, effectively
maintaining the appearance that it is always on its home network. Even while the Mobile
Node is roaming on foreign networks, its movements are transparent to correspondent
nodes. Data packets addressed to the Mobile Node are routed to its home network, where
the Home Agent now intercepts and tunnels them to the care-of address toward the
Mobile Node. Tunneling has two primary functions: encapsulation of the data packet to
reach the tunnel endpoint, and encapsulation when the packet is delivered at that
endpoint. The default tunnel mode is IP Encapsulation within IPEncapsulation.
Optionally, GRE and minimal encapsulation within IP may be used. Typically, the
Mobile Node sends packets to the Foreign Agent, which routes them to their final
destination, the Correspondent Node, as shown in Figure 5.
However, this data path is topologically incorrect because it does not reflect the true
IP network source for the data—rather; it reflects the home network of the Mobile Node.
Because the packets show the home network as their source inside a foreign network, an
access control list on routers in the network called ingress filtering drops the packets
instead of forwarding them. A feature called reverse tunneling solves this problem by
having the Foreign Agent tunnel packets back to the Home Agent when it receives them
from the mobile node see figure 6.
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[Seminar Report On Mobile IP]
Routing inefficiencies.
The base Mobile IP specification has the effect of introducing a tunnel into the
routing path followed by packets sent by the correspondent node to the mobile node.
Packets from the mobile node, on the other hand, can go directly to the correspondent
node with no tunneling required. This asymmetry is captured by the term triangle routing,
where a single leg of the triangle goes from the mobile node to the correspondent node,
and the home agent forms the third vertex controlling the path taken by data from the
correspondent node to the mobile node. Triangle routing is alleviated by use of
techniques in the route optimization draft, but doing so requires changes in the
correspondent nodes that will take a long time to deploy for IPv4. It is hoped that triangle
routing will not be a factor for IPv6 mobility.
Security issues .
A great deal of attention is being focused on making Mobile IP coexist with the
security features coming into use within the Internet. Firewalls in particular, cause
difficulty for Mobile IP because they block all classes of incoming packets that do not
meet specified criteria. Enterprise firewalls are typically configured to block packets from
entering via the Internet that appear to emanate from internal computers. Although this
permits management of internal Internet nodes without great attention to security, it
presents difficulties for mobile nodes wishing to communicate with other nodes within
their home enterprise networks. Such communications, originating from the mobile node,
carry the mobile node's home address, and would thus be blocked by the firewall.
Mobile IP can be viewed as a protocol for establishing secure tunnels. Gupta and
Glass have proposed a firewall traversal solution. Efforts along these lines are also being
made at BBN as part of the MOIPS (Managed Objects for IP Mobility Support) project to
extend Mobile IP operation across firewalls, even when multiple security domains are
involved.
Ingress filtering.
Ingress Filtering involves routers dropping packets that do not have a source IP
address consistent with the network address of the network it is being sent from. This
presents a major problem to the operation of Mobile IP. As was described in above topic,
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a mobile node attached to a foreign network sends packets using its home address as the
packet source. Hence the packet source will have a different network prefix to the foreign
network address. Routers in the foreign network that employ ingress filtering will drop
this packet.
Complications are also presented by ingress filtering operations. Many border
routers discard packets coming from within the enterprise if the packets do not contain a
source IP address configured for one of the enterprise's internal networks. Because
mobile nodes would otherwise use their home address as the so urce IP address of the
packets they transmit, this presents difficulty. Solutions to this problem in Mobile IPv4
typically involve tunneling outgoing packets from the care-of address, but then the
difficulty is how to find a suitable target for the tunneled packet from the mobile node.
The only universally agreed on possibility is the home agent, but that target introduces
yet another serious routing anomaly for communications between the mobile node and
the rest of the Internet. Montenegro has proposed the use of reverse tunnels to the home
agent to counter the restriction imposed by ingress filtering. Mobile IPv6 also offers a
solution in the home address destination option.
Issues in IP addressing.
Mobile IP creates the perception that the mobile node is always attached to its
home network. This forms the basis for the reachability of the mobile node at an IP
address that can be conventionally associated with its fully qualified domain name
(FQDN). If the FQDN is associated with one or more other IP addresses, perhaps
dynamically, then those alternative IP addresses may deserve equal standing with the
mobile node's home address. Moreover, it is possible that such an alte rnative IP address
would offer a shorter routing path if, for instance, the address were apparently located on
a physical link nearer to the mobile node's care-of address, or if the alternative address
were the care-of address itself. Finally, many communications are short- lived and depend
on neither the actual identity of the mobile node nor its FQDN, and thus do not take
advantage of the simplicity afforded by use of the mobile node's home address. These
issues surrounding the mobile node's selection of a n appropriate long-term (or not-so-
long-term) address for use in establishing connections are complex and are far from being
resolved.
Mobile IP may well face competition from alternative tunneling protocols such as
PPTP and L2TP. These other protocols, based on PPP, offer at least portability to mobile
computers. Although I believe portable operation will ultimately not be a long-term
solution, it may look quite attractive in the short term in the absence of full Mobile IP
deployment. If these alternative methods are made widely available, it is unclear if the
use of Mobile IP will be displaced or instead made more immediately desirable as people
experience the convenience of mobile computing. In the future, it is also possible that
Mobile IP could specify use of such alternative tunneling protocols to capitalize on their
deployment on platforms that do not support IP-within- IP encapsulation.
Triangular Routing
Triangular routing is the situation where all traffic from the correspondent node to
the mobile node is routed via the home agent. This method of routing increases the traffic
on the network as the packets are first routed to the home agent and from here they are
tunneled to the mobile node. In particular this increases the load on the home agent.
Congestion
The Protocol Ipv4 is not the one which can accommodate and grow with the
increasing number of users in the Mobile World. With its 32-bit addressing scheme
there can be only 4 billion Mobile Devices which can be attached at a time. The
Mobile devices grow with an average of 1000 per day o nly in India which of course is
a large figure to suffice in the lesser device support by the Protocol. Thus the problem
of congestion always happens during transmission. The core problem here is with
clear hearing. You might have easily found transmission delays while you are talking
which is in short the ratio of large devices using the same frequency with the fewer
devices supported. As data is highly feed in the narrow channel bandwidth the delays
and no signal issues arise within the network.
9.2 Security
One of the biggest differences between IPv6 and IPv4 is that all IPv6 nodes are
expected to implement strong authentication and encryption features to improve Internet
security. This affords a major simplification for IPv6 mobility support, since all
authentication procedures can be assumed to exist when needed and do not have to be
specified in the Mobile IPv6 protocol. Even with the security features in IPv6, however,
the current working group draft for IPv6 mobility support specifies the use of
authentication procedures as infrequently as possible. The reasons for this are twofold.
First, good authentication comes at the cost of performance and so should be required
only occasionally. Second, questions about the availability of Internet-wide key
management are far from resolved at this time.
often been used. Another solution is through active routers that intercept registration
messages to update routing tables. Unfortunately, most real world networks lack support
for these techniques. In yet another scheme packet are acknowledged and buffered at
FAs. This eliminates the adverse effects that result from interpretation of
unacknowledged packets as packet loss due to congestion. The obvious problem with this
scheme is that it requires support for FAs. The performance problem is worse with
implementations such as Mosquito Net, which do away with FAs altogether to make
mobile IP usable on a wider set of networks. There is just one HA, in addition to mobile
host (MH) software on the mobile device.
For such implementations, packet loss is significant as there is no entity to store
the packets at network A as the device moves to B. The use of multicasting or active
routers is also ruled out as these require special network support. How can we get
reasonable performance with implementations such as Mosquito Net? One possible
approach that we propose is to use smart buffering at the HA. In this scheme, the mobile
device, in the process of moving from network A to B, initiates the process at the HA by
sending it an ICMP request rather that a full- fledged registration message. The HA
buffers unacknowledged packets sent to network A, as well as newly arriving packets.
However, it forwards the packet only after the registration is complete. The HA adopts a
small and accurate retransmission interval and normal window-size to avoid the problems
discussed above arising due to misinterpreted congestion. This scheme requires changes
only to the HA and MH, and hence can work with any foreign network. Smart buffering is
best implemented in conjunction with a framework that dynamically discovers and
leverages support for FAs, active routers, multicasting etc. in a given network, so that
their performance advantages are realized. Designing such as architecture is of course an
engineering challenge.
11. CONCLUSION
As this brief introduction to mobile networking has shown, Mobile IP has great
potential. Security needs are getting active attention and will benefit from the deployment
efforts underway. Within the IETF, Mobile IP is likely to move from a proposed standard
to a draft standard in the near future.
The IETF standardization process requires the working group to rigorously
demonstrate interoperability among various independent implementations before the
protocol can advance. FTP Software has hosted two interoperability testing sessions, and
many vendors have taken advantage of the opportunity. Test results have given added
confidence that the Mobile IP specification is sound, implementable, and of diverse
interest throughout the Internet community. Only a few minor revisions have been
needed to ensure the specification can be interpreted in only one way by the network
protocol engineers and programmers who must implement it.
It is possible that the deployment pace of Mobile IP will track that of IPv6 or that
the requirements for supporting mobility in IPv6 nodes will give additional impetus to the
deployment of both IPv6 and mobile networking. The increased user convenience and the
reduced need for application awareness of mobility can be a major driving force for
adoption. Since both IPv6 and Mobile IP have little direct effect on the operating systems
of mobile computers outside of the network layer of the protocol stack, application
designers should find this to be an acceptable programming environment. Of course,
everything depends heavily on the willingness of platform and router vendors to
implement Mobile IP and/or IPv6, but indications are strong that most major vendors
already have implementations either finished or underway.
The desire to improve the performance of mobile IP conflicts with the desire to
use mobile IP on a wide set of networks. We have motivated one possible solution based
on smart buffering and dynamic network service discovery.