Open mobility management platform with directory-based architecture and signalling protocols

The introduction of user and terminal mobility into private communication networks requires the provision of mobility management services. They handle the dynamic locations of mobile users and terminals and maintain the allocation of personal service profiles. The author is developing an open mobility management platform that contains a set of support functions and APIs on which mobility management services can be easily built. The platform performs location and profile handling based on distributed X.500 directory services and implements the required mobility management signalling protocols based on X.500 and LDAP directory access protocols. Additionally the platform offers three mobility abstraction levels that he uses to build mobile and location-aware multimedia applications. He developed a multi-master replication protocol for the directory servers inside the platform to fulfil the demanding performance and availability requirements of corporate networks. The mobility management services built on this platform can be easily customised to changing and evolving requirements and the platform functionality can be extended due to the generic directory service approach.