Factoring IPv6 Device Mobility and Ad-hoc Interactions into the Service Location Protocol

Abstract

The rise in device mobility, interactions for service discovery as well as IPv6 networking, necessitate a means by which a clear and consistent approach towards supporting rapid, dynamic service discovery and service provision must be undertaken. This paper describes ways to provide movement detection, automatic and dynamic discovery of network services as well as network characteristics at the point of attachment for mobile devices moving in IPv6 network spaces. It employs a service discovery mechanism based on using the Service Location Protocol (SLP), one of the most extensively researched and standardised discovery protocols in existence today. We show why traditional means of service discovery have shortcomings when used in advanced mobile networking environments, and describe new extensions to overcome these issues without losing compatibility to existing work in SLP. Prototypes developed and tested from the work described provided empirical verification over several of our production and research IPv6 networks.