GM-MPLS: Group-based Mobile MPLS for mobility management in wired/wireless networks

Recently, the IETF proposed a Mobile IP as a mobility management protocol. However, host-based mobility management protocols such as MIPv6, FMIPv6 and HMIPv6 have issues such as handover latency, signaling overhead or node power consumption. Likewise, network-based localized mobility management protocols, such as PMIPv6, have defects that are not supported in multiple domains and are also not guaranteed to maintain reliable data transmission during handovers. Moreover, M-MPLS, HMMPLS and OM-MPLS manage mobility through MPLS instead of through an IP-to-IP tunnel. However, they still have the same problems as those of HMIPv6 as well as the additional overhead of establishing an Label Switch Path(LSP). This paper proposes a GM-MPLS in order to overcome the performance degradation factors of the existing protocols. GM-MPLS is a network-based mobility management protocol for both wired and wireless networks using group-based mobile management and P-MPLS. The group-based mobile management focuses on handling mobility through a mobile node's (MN) group composed of surrounding ARs. Since all group members share the necessary information for handover, the handover overhead of MN can be minimized. On the other hand, P-MPLS uses a modified MPLS scheme in order to assign a fixed label to each AR. Since LSP does not need to be established upon an MN movement, there is no overhead. Also, because P-MPLS is a 2.5-level protocol, the assigned IP address is not changed so we do not need to check duplicate address detection(DAD). Moreover, as P-MPLS allows MN to complete a Layer3 handover through one signaling, it minimizes the handover delay as well as the power consumption of MN.