A Link Layer Solution to Location Identification of Emergency VoIP Callers

Abstract

Identifying the geographical location of a host on the Internet is a very challenging task. Due to a number of reasons, there is no direct mechanism that could enable this identification. Several approaches have been proposed to solve this problem but these have not proved to be suitable for some applications specially the critical VoIP calls. In this paper, we study this problem and propose the use of a MAC layer approach to solve this problem. We propose a solution based on LLDP-MED (Link Layer Discovery Protocol for Media Endpoint Devices) and compare it with LIS (Location Information Server). We discuss these two techniques in terms of network delay for two groups of users (wired line and wireless Internet users) for emergency casesand also discuss some other issues such as security and accuracy.