Survey on network mobility support

Abstract

Providing unperturbed Internet connectivity to mobile hosts has been studied in the IETF for some years now, and protocols such as Mobile IP and Mobile IPv6 have been developed. We are now witnessing the emergence of mobile networks, namely a set of hosts that move collectively as a unit, such as on ships and aircrafts. The protocols for mobility support therefore need to be extended from supporting an individual mobile device to supporting an entire mobile network. In this paper we examine the state-of-the-art in network mobility support. We first motivate the problem by considering typical network mobility scenarios and identify the characteristics that require new solutions. We then study the design requirements of the protocols that support network mobility. Thereafter, we review some of the current approaches for network mobility support, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses in addressing the design requirements. We conclude by identifying some open research issues in the realization of mobile networks.