Implementation and performance evaluation of a mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) simulation model for ns-3

Mobile internet protocol version 6 (MIPv6) is the base standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for Internet Protocol (IP) based mobility management in wireless networks. The next generation mobility management schemes are mainly following the protocol stack of MIPv6. However, till date the widely-used network simulator version 3 (ns-3) - which aims to replace the aging ns-2 and its associated old-featured simulators - does not have even in its latest version an MIPv6 module that is fully compliant to the IETF specification. To fill this gap, we present in this work a novel MIPv6 simulation model which can be integrated into ns-3. We explain the complete design logic of the module, and also perform evaluation of the same in ns-3. To validate our proposition, we compare its handoff performance results with both numerical results, obtained analytically, and published results, based on Linux test bed, CNI-MIPv6 test bed and Objective modular network testbed (OMNET++) simulation. To show the usefulness of our contribution, we have exemplified how hierarchical MIPv6 (HMIPv6) can be implemented by extending the basic MIPv6 module proposed by us.