A Route Optimization Scheme for the eTIMIP Micro-Mobility Protocol

This paper describes a local Route Optimization (RO) scheme applicable to IP micro-mobility protocols, which increases the protocols' efficiency and scalability while maintaining their fast-handovers capabilities. This is done by reducing and decentralizing the chain of agents that participate in the data forwarding to stationary mobile nodes. This generic RO scheme is exemplified for the eTIMIP protocol, an efficient and transparent micro-mobility solution. NS2 simulations evaluated the RO extension in comparison to basic eTIMIP and alternative solutions, showing that the extension is able to both lower the packet delay, decreasing the number of hops and improving handover efficiency, and to relieve the gateway and other internal control agents from data forwarding functions.