Mobile IPv6 and the future of wireless Internet access

Wireless technology is increasingly being used for Internet access and other IP-based communications. To make it easier for wireless users to exploit this trend, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) designed Mobile IP version 4 in 1996. However, MIPv4 has not been deployed widely enough to provide much mobility and has several major shortcomings, including a cumbersome communications process and a limited number of IP addresses. The latter is a key problem because the number of mobile devices that need their own IP address to access the Internet is increasing rapidly. To overcome these deficiencies and introduce new capabilities, the IETF has been developing MIPv6. MIPv6 makes many more IP addresses available and lets mobile users stay connected to the Internet as they move between networks. The paper discusses MIPv6 implementation.