Flow-based fast handover for mobile IPv6 environment – implementation and analysis

Mobility Support in IPv6 (MIPv6) has been approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force as the standardized solution for mobility management in the upcoming IPv6 network. However, the MIPv6 handover procedures result in a time, when the Mobile Node (MN) cannot receive or send data. In this paper we present the Flow-based Fast Handover for Mobile IPv6 (FFHMIPv6) for fast redirection of the MN’s downstream flows during the Care-of-Address registration (binding update) process and another method speeding up the upstream handover by using a special Hand-of-Address (HofA) during registration process. First, we have studied the FFHMIPv6 method combined with the use of HofA theoretically, followed by the Network Simulator 2 (ns-2) simulations. Finally the effectiveness of FFHMIPv6 method is verified in real Mobile IPv6 for Linux environment. The FFHMIPv6 method with the use of HofA has been found to be a simple and promising candidate for faster handovers in MIPv6 networks with only a few minor changes to the MIPv6 specification.