Performance Evaluation of a Hybrid Paging Mechanism to Support Locator Identity Split End-Host Mobility

Over the last few years the number of mobile nodes connecting to the Internet over wireless networks increased considerably. Mobile nodes want to roam freely and always be connected to the Internet. Unfortunately the current IP architecture is not designed for end-to-end mobility because of the overloaded semantics of the IP address. This dual role hinders mobility. As a result Locator Identity Split Protocols are implemented in order to decouple the IP namespace into distinct Locator and Identity namespaces. Thus mobile nodes using a Locator Identity Split Protocol will have their connection always maintained while they are roaming. However, the main challenge, is to actually precisely locate the mobile node (which is using a Locator Identity Split Protocol) in order to constantly deliver data packets while they are moving. In order to locate the mobile node, a hybrid paging mechanism has been implemented and tested for mobile nodes which are using a variant of the GSE/8+8 Locator Identity Split Protocol. The hybrid paging mechanism consists of a hierarchy of paging agents responsible to register mobile nodes within a paging area and keeps track of the mobile node within the paging area. The hybrid paging mechanism has been evaluated on a real IPv6 wireless network topology. The main performance evaluation done is the registration of the mobile nodes and tracking of the mobile nodes under three different types of network traffic load. The results obtained will be used as benchmarking result for implementing the same topology in a simulated environment as well as for optimizing the hybrid paging mechanism.