Mobile IP is to move the mobile node to maintain its connectivity and design. There are two versions of Mobile IP, namely Mobile IPv4 (RFC 3344, replaces RFC 3220, RFC 2002) and Mobile IPv6 (RFC 3775). Is still widely used in Mobile IPv4.
A Client-based Handoff Mechanism for Mobile IPv6 Wireless Networks Leo Patanapongpibul Glenford Mapp Laboratory for Communication Engineering Formerly of AT&T Laboratories - Cambridge Ltd University of Cambridge now at Middlesex University Cambridge, United Kingdom United Kingdom firstname.lastname@example.org email@example.com Abstract 2. Motivation Mobile IP enables mobile computers to roam transpar- ently in any network. However, the current proposed proto- col speciﬁcation does not support a suitable handoff mech- Since IPv6 was designed to replace IPv4, considerations anism to allow a mobile computer to change its point of at- for introducing new functionalities and improving on IPv4 tachment from one network to another. This paper describes were taken into account. IPv6 routers have built-in func- a handoff mechanism for a mobile host which makes use of tions eliminating the need for a Foreign Agent. Triangular Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and Mobile IP without routing and tunneling required for Mobile IPv4 can now be the need to introduce a new mobility management protocol avoided through IPv6 routing headers. Security problems or make changes to the network infrastructure. are intrinsically solved with improved addressing architec- ture and scalability issues are overcome with its 128-bit ad- dress space. Despite all the beneﬁts from IPv6, Mobile IP still needs 1. Introduction some minor reﬁnements. One such reﬁnement tackled in this paper is the handoff mechanism required when a mo- bile host wishes to roam. The IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN The proliferation of mobile computers has created a need standard is used as a case study to demonstrate a new client- for transparent mobility. Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) based handoff mechanism for Mobile IPv6. is widely used in all networks but is a relatively old protocol originally designed for wired networks. With the advent Currently it is not possible for mobile computers to trans- of wireless computing, new problems have emerged which parently roam away from its home administrative domain challenge the capabilities of IPv4. with today’s IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN products. There Over the years, the research community has introduced are two solutions to overcome this problem, one method new methods to overcome these problems and support mo- is to incorporate a protocol in the wireless access points bile networking. Perkins  introduced Mobile IP for IPv4 or routers to assist mobile hosts with seamless handoffs as to support mobile hosts roaming away from their home net- they move from one point of attachment to another, i.e. at work domain, thereby allowing them to retain active net- the subnet and network domain scale. The second solution work sessions without having to restart their network ser- is to allow the mobile host to decide when it should move vices. over to a new point of attachment. The later solution avoids the problem of interoperability between different vendor’s In the ﬁrst Mobile IPv4 proposals, there were problems products. The handoff mechanism we proposed is based on with triangular routing, security and other wireless network- this solution. ing issues, including the need to add new components to the IPv4 network infrastructure. The IETF Mobile IP working This paper introduces a handoff policy and a Mobile IP group was created to solve these problems and reﬁne the registration enhancement to efﬁciently handle mobile host protocol. Mobile IP for IPv4 is now an Internet standard handoffs with minimal disruption to user trafﬁc. The new (RFC3344) whereas Mobile IP for IPv6 is on course to be- handoff mechanism is evaluated experimentally and com- coming a standard. pared to traditional Mobile IP handoffs. 3. Related Work Connection State TCP handoff module Client-based Mobile IP enables mobile computers to roam seamlessly Mobile IP in different administrative domains. However, the proto- RA Neighbor IPv6 Discovery col has its disadvantages when mobile hosts rate of hand- Link status off increases within the foreign administrative domain and Link Layer from one foreign domain to another. The protocol broadly Physical Layer describes movement detection based on Router Advertise- ments (RA) as an indication of when to perform a handoff and also suggests that the mobile host can implement its Figure 1. Relative position of the client-based own policy, i.e. a link-layer “roaming” protocol , to help handoff mechanism in the TCP/IP protocol with the handoff decision process. A number of approaches stack. have been taken in order to fulﬁll the need for such a process and reduce the handoff latency. One approach taken was the introduction of micro- mobility protocols which were broadly aimed at improving tion. Both the hierarchical and multicast techniques require the transparent roaming of mobile hosts at the subnet level modiﬁcations to the network entities whereas our work is a of a network domain. A number of these solutions have simple extension made to the mobile host. been proposed since the introduction of Mobile IP. Camp- There has been no implementation that avoids the mod- bell  has written a survey of micro-mobility protocols. iﬁcation of Mobile IP or the standard network entities in Further to this, an IETF working group, called Seamoby, the network domain for mobile hosts to roam transparently was formed to resolve the complex interaction of parame- with a low handoff latency. Our implementation intends to ters and protocols needed for seamless handoffs. The two address this problem. main issues being dealt by this working group are the dor- mant mode host alerting problem (i.e. paging) , and con- 4. Mechanism Overview text transfers between nodes in an IP access network (i.e. handoff) . The work proposed in this paper can comple- There are two ways to provide a suitable handoff mecha- ment micro-mobility protocols and Seamoby efforts, intro- nism for mobile hosts. The ﬁrst is to make modiﬁcations or ducing minimal additions to the mobile host for less signal- add extensions to the entities in the network infrastructure. ing overheads. Routers or base stations can be changed so that they will The IETF MobileIP working group has an Internet Draft only send RAs to the mobile host when a handoff is nec- proposing a protocol for supporting fast handoffs: FMIPv6 essary as opposed to periodically sending RAs. However, . The protocol aims to reduce the handoff latency this means the approximate location and signal strength of caused by the movement detection and the Mobile IP regis- the mobile host need to be cached in nearby routers or base tration process. When a handoff is imminent, the later prob- stations. Additional signaling may be required in order to lem is solved by keeping the mobile host ongoing trafﬁc enable such a system to operate correctly. This method has alive with the current access router while the Mobile IP reg- the advantage of offering a complete mobility management istration process is carried out with the new access router. protocol for the network infrastructure, but has the disad- Like the MIPv6 draft, FMIPv6 also broadly suggests a trig- vantage of introducing greater complexity. ger for the “Handoff Initiation” which may derive from spe- The second way is to make modiﬁcations or add exten- ciﬁc link layer (L2) events or policy rules. These triggers sions on the client-side, i.e. the mobile host. In this case, are not speciﬁed in the draft and thereby would beneﬁt the it is the client that decides when a handoff is appropriate. work discussed in this paper. This necessarily implies loss of control to some extent on A number of simple methods have been proposed, some the network domain’s side. The advantage of this, however, modifying network entities, which directly tackle the hand- is its apparent simplicity and scalability, which are the rea- off latency in Mobile IP. These are based on hierarchical sons why our own mechanism is based on this approach. a or multicast handoff mechanisms. C` ceres  obtained ex- We will now describe our mechanism in detail and how perimental results for the performance of a minimal hier- it tackles the following issues: archical handoff scheme. This had the advantages of not having the complexity of extending routes or anticipating 1. Controlling and forcing handoffs handoffs to improve the handoff latency. A simple multicast 2. Determining the best link technique proposed by Helmy  suggested minor modiﬁ- cations to Mobile IP, and validated the method by simula- 3. Handing off at the appropriate time The client-based handoff mechanism is illustrated in Fig. 5. The Handoff Process 1 as a module in the TCP/IP protocol stack. There are two situations where handoff can be initiated: 4.1. Controlling and Forcing Handoffs Scenario 1: The current mobile host’s point of attach- ment (base station) has a failure or becomes out of range, The mobile host initiates a handoff every time it receives preventing any data transmission or reception causing the a Router Advertisement (RA) from any base station. Our mobile host to perform a hard handoff. This potentially handoff module provides the mobile host with the capabil- causes some packets to or from the mobile host to be ity of ﬁltering RAs to avoid the default processing of hand- dropped during the process. Handoff is initiated by a han- offs. Thus, the handoff module only forces handoff when dler, which monitors the link status, upon the detection of required. a link disconnection. The next available RA from the RA Cache is then immediately processed. 4.2. Determining the best link Scenario 2: The signal strength of the wireless link be- tween the mobile host and current base station reaches a To enable the mobile host to select the best point of at- predeﬁned threshold. A soft handoff is initiated by the link tachment, we have introduced a RA cache in the handoff status handler. The handoff module checks for the TCP con- module. This provides the mobile host with the capability nection status before deciding to perform a handoff. If there of choosing the best link from the cache. A policy, based is an active connection, the signal strength threshold is set on prioritizing RAs, was devised to assist with the best link to a lower value. If there is no active TCP connection or the decision. The two most important criteria used to determine signal strength is below the lower threshold value, the next the priority of the RAs stored in the cache are: available RA stored in the RA cache is immediately pro- • the link signal strength, i.e. signal quality & SNR level cessed. There is virtually no packet loss in a soft handoff. In both scenarios, provided that there is at least one alter- • the time since the RA entry was last updated native RA in the cache, the RA with the highest priority in the RA cache is forwarded to the IP packet handler for pro- The two less important criteria are: cessing. If there is no RA available, handoff is delayed and • the number of hops to the access router the IPv6 Neighbor Unreachability Detection is invoked to probe for a point of attachment in the network. This is done • whether or not the access router is link-local by forcing the sending of a periodic Router Solicitation to request for RAs. 4.3. Handing off at the appropriate time Although the application of the aforementioned criteria 6. Implementation will generally yield a higher data throughput by handing off to the best link, there are cases when it is advantageous In order to evaluate the system, a testbed was imple- to trade off a potential increase in signal strength against mented. This was based on a number of desktops and hand- maintaining an active data connection. In order to adopt our held personal computers (mobile hosts) running Linux with mechanism accordingly, the handoff module takes into ac- IPv6 support and Mobile IPv6 extensions (MIPL) . The count the state of TCP connections. Hence, when a handoff decision to use MIPL was based on its completeness and its is necessary, an open TCP socket will cause the threshold open source nature as compared to other Mobile IP imple- value of the signal strength criterion to be lowered and the mentations . The topology of the testbed is shown in Fig. handoff to be delayed. In this way, disruptions to TCP con- 2. The base stations in the network domain uses the IEEE nections can be avoided if the difference between the cur- 802.11b standard, and the wireless interface installed on the rent link quality and the threshold level is minimal. Once Pocket PC is set to promiscuous receive mode. The network the signal strength drops below the lower threshold value or in the diagram is a native IPv6 network. The two network there are no open TCP sockets, the RA Cache entry ﬂagged domains are indirectly connected through 6BONE  facil- with the highest priority is passed to the IP packet handler itating testing of the Mobile IP capability of the network. for processing. In Fig. 2, each base station (A, B and C) belongs to a The handoff module depends on a link status handler different subnet. With the existing IPv6 implementation, the which monitors the link connectivity. This avoids the need mobile host can move between different base stations (not to decrease the RA interval in the access routers in order illustrated) in subnet A without any disruption to its network to improve the detection speed of a link disconnection as connection. However, when the mobile host moves from, suggested in previous Mobile IP Internet Drafts . say, base station A to B, the terminal needs to re-establish Figure 3. Behaviour of a UDP data stream from the correspondent node to the mobile host. Figure 2. Mobile IPv6 Testbed ing an uniform or a variable handoff interval does not effect the ﬁnal result. network connections – in effect, terminating any active data 2. The second test was to observe the effect of the av- session such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) ﬁle transfers. erage throughput for a number of handoff frequencies The proposed handoff mechanism was developed as a with and without the handoff extension for Mobile IP. dynamically loadable Linux kernel driver module for the The UDP datagram size (excluding UDP, IP and link mobile hosts. The module is tied to the IPv6 Neighbor Dis- layer headers) was chosen to be 1424 bytes, based covery protocol to monitor for IPv6 RAs from nearby Home on the results from the ﬁrst experiment, for optimum Agents received via the wireless interface, and to monitor link utilization – the IPv6 speciﬁcation states that the the IPv6 packet handler for any active TCP sessions via the link MTU (maximum transmission unit) must not be same interface. As described previously, these factors are greater than 1500 bytes. Similarly to the ﬁrst experi- used by the mobile host to make a handoff decision. The ment, handoff was forced between base stations B and handoff extension also restricts the processing of RAs by C. Both hard (Scenario 1) and soft (Scenario 2) hand- only allowing the Neighbor Discovery protocol to process offs were studied for this experiment. RAs when a handoff is required. In both experiments a video data stream was set up be- 6.1. The Experiments tween the correspondent node (see Fig. 2) and Pocket PC (a mobile host) to monitor the behavior of User Datagram Pro- Two experiments were carried out based on both scenar- tocol (UDP) packets in a data stream with a variable handoff ios described above but without FMIPv6. frequency. The correspondent node was a UDP source and the mobile host was a UDP sink. The average round trip 1. The ﬁrst experiment was to analyze the effect on the time between the mobile host and correspondent node was average packet loss when the UDP datagram size and 2.2ms regardless of the mobile host’s current point of at- the handoff frequency were varied. The characteristic tachment. The mobile host was tested under the condition of the link and the bottleneck at the mobile host was to roam outside its home subnet A and forced to handoff studied to help select a UDP datagram size for the next only between two foreign subnets B and C at random time experiment. Handoff was forced on the mobile host be- intervals. tween base stations B and C to achieve a deﬁned hand- The access routers were conﬁgured to send RAs every 3 off frequency in the range of zero to ten handoffs per to 4 seconds. These were the minimum possible values that minute. To achieve a deﬁned handoff frequency, ex- can be set according to the Neighbor Discovery for IPv6 periments on UDP data streams have shown that hav- RFC document. Figure 5. The hard handoff behavior of Mobile Figure 4. A detailed graph of Fig. 3 IP and Mobile IP with the handoff module for 1424-byte UDP datagrams. The range of the RA interval was also varied above the minimum values but has proven to have no signiﬁcant effect on the average throughput and packet loss because of the the result did not show any signiﬁcant packet loss and re- RA cache in the mobile host. There has been previous work duction in throughput. This experiment was carried out to , with experimental results, which investigated the effect illustrate the mobile host limitations, and a suitable data- of the RA period on the data throughput. This work has gram size for UDP data streams. shown that the higher the RA frequency, the less likely the handoff latency will effect a UDP data stream. However, The results of the second experiment are plotted in Fig. there is a tradeoff between reducing the RA interval and the 5. The graph clearly shows an improvement in the hand- throughput of the data stream. off latency when the RA Cache in the handoff mechanism Because the experiments were conducted on a testbed, is present for hard handoffs. This is because the mobile the results were affected by trafﬁc from 6BONE, and by host perceives the RA interval to be zero as compared to the the limited processing power of the mobile hosts needed to minimum possible RA interval without the handoff mod- process incoming packets. ule. The delay in the mobile host receiving the RA with Mobile IP for hard handoffs can be seen from the reduced 6.2. Results and Discussion throughput with increasing handoff frequencies shown by the graph. The percentage packet loss for the corresponding data- Experimental results for soft handoff show that the gram size from the ﬁrst experiment were plotted and shown throughput of Mobile IP with and without the RA Cache in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. The data points for each handoff fre- are similar. They were averaging at 710 Kbytes/second for quency were joined by a line to create the graph in Fig. 3. any handoff interval. This is because handoff was forced The graph illustrates a high percentage packet loss for UDP even though the signal strength of base station B and C (see datagrams less than 380 bytes in size. This is caused by the Fig. 2 were above the predeﬁned threshold level. limiting processing capability of the mobile host. Packets The Mobile IP with RA Cache graph shows a drop in were generated from the correspondent node at a rate which throughput at higher handoff frequencies. This is caused by the mobile host could not maintain. the Mobile IP registration time. The latency of this period The percentage packet loss of UDP datagrams between was measured to be approximately 1.5 seconds. If there was 380 to 1470 bytes is illustrated in a separate graph, Fig. 4. no latency in this process, the throughput should be constant This graph shows second order trend lines drawn through at 710 Kbytes/sec. a plot of data points. For a UDP payload larger than 1424 The utilization of the link can also affect the experimen- bytes, fragmentation of the packets causes an increase in the tal results. The speed of the link, determined by the link packet loss and the reduction of the throughput with higher capacity used, can greatly improve the throughput of the handoff frequencies. At zero handoffs per minute, there ap- data connection. To verify that the mobile host was using pears to be nearly no packet loss compared to tests with the full link capacity, particularly in the second experiment, handoffs. Although the handoff frequency was increased, since the datagram size was chosen to be 1424 bytes, equa- tion 1 was used to calculate the link utilization. Because a is Scalability issues may be a problem if the mobile host inversely proportional to the datagram size L, a larger L will can send or receive data to any base stations in the network, result in a higher U. The distance d of the mobile host from but some base station vendors have support for intelligent the base stations was within one meter and the data rate R handoffs of mobile hosts within the same subnet. In cases of the link was set to the maximum value of 11 Mbits/sec to when the base stations do not have support for intelligent ensure a high U. Data transmission was through air, hence handoffs, the work in this paper can be used to solve such a V is the speed of light (3x10 8 m/s). The resulting link uti- problem in wireless networks. lization U, calculated from equation 1, was 100%. 1 9. Acknowledgments U= (1) 1+a where The authors would like to thank James Scott for helpful Length of data link in bits d/V discussions and comments. Further gratitude goes to Andy a= = Hopper for his guidance. This project is funded by the UK Length of frame in bits L/R Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and In summary, the graphs show a clear indication of the AT&T Laboratories. improvement of Mobile IP with the handoff module. The integration of the FMIPv6 Internet Draft could also mean a reduction in the handoff latency due to the Mobile IP regis- References tration process, hence further decreasing the packet losses. a  R. C´ ceres and V. Padmanabhan. Fast and scalable wire- less handoffs in supports of mobile Internet audio. Mobile 7. Future Work Networks and Applications, 3(4):351–363, 1999.  A. Campbell and J. Gomez-Castellanos. IP Micro-Mobility The handoff protocol described in this paper is part of an Protocols. ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Com- effort to allow hosts to roam while away from their home munications Review, 4(4):45–53, October 2000. domain without experiencing signiﬁcant disruption to their  M. Dunmore and C. Edwards. Survey and Eval- network connections. The handoff module and the Mo- uation of MIPv6 Implementations. Deliverable bile IP Fast Handoff (FMIPv6) Internet Draft are important 32603/ULANC/DS/4.1.1/A1, 6NET, May 2002.  N. Fikouras, A. Konsgen, and C. Gorg. Accelerating Mo- components to support stateless mobile computing and mul- bile IP hand-offs through Extended Link-layer Informa- timedia mobile terminals. tion. In Proceedings of the International Multiconference The next step in this research will be to perform an ex- on Measurement, Modelling and Evaluation of Computer- haustive analysis of the handoff mechanism and compare communication Systems. VDE Verlag, 2001. the results with FMIPv6. Preliminary results have shown  A. Helmy. A multicast-based protocol for ip mobility sup- our mechanism reduces the handoff latency of TCP connec- port. In Proceedings of NGC 2000 on Networked Group tions by 50%. Post analysis results may introduce additional Communication, pages 49–58. ACM Press, 2000. enhancements which could be made to our mechanism.  R. Hinden, R. Fink, and J. Postel. IPv6 Testing Address Allocation. IETF Request for comments, RFC 2471, De- cember 1998. 8. Conclusion  D. Johnson, C. Perkins, and J. Arkko. Mobility support in IPv6. IETF Internet-Draft, October 2002. The client-based handoff mechanism presented in this  J. Kempf. Dormant Mode Host Alerting (IP Paging) Prob- paper is a simple solution to provide a controlled handoff lem Statement. IETF Request for comments, RFC 3132, technique and a reduction in the handoff latency for IPv6 June 2001. networks with Mobile IP support. The solution offers a de-  J. Kempf. Problem Description: Reasons For Doing Context cision making mechanism, known as “triggers,” for hand- Transfers Between Nodes in an IP Access Network. IETF offs and a method to reduce the mobile host dependability Request for comments, RFC 3374, September 2002.  R. Koodli. Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6. IETF Internet- on the router advertisement period and router solicitation. Draft, September 2002. The concept of a RA cache has been proven to reduce the  Mobile IP for Linux (MIPL) Implementation by handoff latency in our testbed. HUT Telecommunications and Multimedia Lab. The IETF Mobile IP working group proposed additional http://www.mipl.mediapoli.com/. techniques for faster handoffs  to the base Mobile IP  C. Perkins. IP Mobility Support. IETF Request for com- protocol by reducing the latency in the Mobile IP registra- ments, RFC 2002, October 1996. tion process. The work described in this paper can comple- ment these extra techniques providing an even faster hand- off.
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