Interoperation of Mobile IPv6 and protocol independent multicast dense mode

We discuss different approaches of providing multicast traffic for mobile hosts. Mobile IPvd is used for mobility support. The network employs protocol independent multicast dense mode (PIM-DM) for multicast routing and multicast listener discovery (MLD) to collect multicast group membership information. We identify and analyze interoperation problems concerning membership control for mobile hosts and efficient multicast packet transfer from/to mobile hosts. We discuss four multicast delivery mechanisms for mobile senders and receivers, and compare them using criteria such as join delay, routing optimality, protocol overhead, network bandwidth and system load. In particular we suggest timer optimizations for MLD to support highly mobile receivers.