Mobility: a VPN perspective [mobile computing]

Mobile computing is becoming increasingly important due to the rise in the number of portable computers and the desire to have continuous network connectivity to the Internet irrespective of the physical location of the node. Mobile IP, the more popular global mobility solution, was designed to support mobility of a single host. Even though the same protocol can be applied in the case of network mobility, providing connectivity to mobile networks introduces many issues related to the scalability, security and QoS. Instead, a mobile network can be cited as a remote site, trying to establish secured communication with the home network. This view of mobile network solves many issues related to QoS, security and scalability. The objective of this paper is to explore the possibility of using different VPN techniques to provide connectivity for mobile networks and measure the corresponding end-to-end performance of real time traffic and best effort traffic patterns.