MOON: a new overlay network architecture for mobility and QoS support

The continuously increasing diffusion of mobile devices such as laptops, PDAs and smartphones, all equipped with enhanced functionalities, has led to numerous studies about mobility and to the definition of new network architectures capable to support it. Problems related to mobility have been addressed mostly operating on the network or transport layers of the Internet protocol stack. As a result, most of these solutions generally require modifying the TCP and/or the IP protocol. Although this approach is well suited to handle mobility, it lacks in compatibility with the Internet Protocol Suite. This consideration led us to study a fully TCP compatible and flexible approach we dubbed MOON, for MObile Overlay Network. This network architecture is currently under design at LIPAR, the Internet, protocols and Network Architecture Lab of Politecnico di Torino.