Handover Latency Analysis of a Network-Based Localized Mobility Management Protocol

Recently, the IETF NETLMM working group is standardizing a network-based localized mobility management (NETLMM) protocol called proxy mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), yet the research on NETLMM is still in its early stage while it has attracted a fair amount of critical attention both in the telecommunication and the Internet communities. Unlike previous host-based mobility management protocols such as mobile IPv6 (MIPv6), hierarchical mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6), and fast handover for mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6), PMIPv6 has salient features and is expected to expedite the real deployment of IP mobility support protocol by using only collaborative operations between the network entities without mobile node (MN) being involved. In this paper, we analyze and compare the handover latency of PMIPv6 with those of the various existing host-based IP mobility management protocols. In addition, we show good efficacy of the desirable features and key strengths of PMIPv6. Numerical results demonstrate that (1) the handover latency of PMIPv6 is much lower than those of MlPv6 and HMIPv6, and (2) the handover latency of PMIPv6 becomes lower than that of FMIPv6 in case the wireless link delay is greater than the delay between mobile access gateway (MAG) and local mobility anchor (LMA).