SHISA: The IPv6 Mobility Framework for BSD Operating Systems

Mobile IPv6 and network mobility basic support (NEMO BS) are the IETF standard mobility protocols for IPv6. When we consider the deployment of a new protocol, it is well understood that the existence of a free protocol implementation, which can be used as a reference implementation for both research and operation, plays important roles. SHISA is a free implementation of Mobile IPv6 and NEMO BS protocols built on top of BSD operating systems. The purpose of SHISA is to be a reference implementation of the mobility protocols and to accelerate the deployment. In this paper, we explain the background of the development, introduce the design and explain the implementation detail. SHISA consists of the modified kernel and the user space programs, which is a similar approach as the routing/forwarding mechanism implemented in many UNIX systems. We designed a new communication layer between kernel and a user space program and also between user space programs to exchange mobility related information. This design makes the implementation simple and extensible. SHISA also provides some advanced features such as multiple care-of address registration and IPv4 prefix support which will help the deployment in a real situation