No abstract

In hierarchical mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6), mobility anchor points (MAPs) are introduced to reduce the signalling cost by localising the signalling traffic of mobile nodes (MNs). However, the presence of MAPs introduces areas of bottleneck within the network. This study evaluates the impact of overlapped domains of consecutive MAPs in HMIPv6 access networks. In this novel network architecture, an MAP registration algorithm is also proposed to enable MNs to register with more than one MAP simultaneously. For each flow, the proposed algorithm determines a primary and a secondary MAP according to the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the traffic flow. Load balancing is also introduced to provide an even distribution of load among MAPs. In addition, an extended router advertisement is proposed to enable multiple MAP registration of MNs. The impact of the proposed algorithm in the new HMIPv6 network architectures is compared with a non-QoS aware multi-MAP registration algorithm in access network with no overlapped MAP domains. The simulation-based comparison study illustrates a maximum of 71 and 74% improvements in total amount of rejected bandwidth and the mean satisfied flow requests in network, respectively.

Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) was proposed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to reduce signalling cost by localising the mobility signalling traffic of Mobile Nodes (MNs). However, certain MNs still generate excessive signalling overhead, due to their ping pong movement at borders of different Mobility Anchor Point (MAP) domains. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed, to effectively reduce the handover signalling overhead in the network. A cost function was developed and allocated to Access Routers (ARs) in then network, by taking into account several parameters. The proposed algorithm spreads the domain of each MAP to its adjacent MAP(s) domains by selecting boundary ARs one by one, based on their cost values, and creating overlapping regions between the domains. The performance in the new network structure created by the proposed algorithm is evaluated against a single MAP per domain HMIPv6 access network. A comparison simulation study illustrates a significant improved performance in the network is obtained, in terms of average rate of inter-area handover, whilst balance in terms of bandwidth utilisation among MAPs is maintained.