Integrating WLANs & MANETs to the IPv6 based Internet

This paper presents a novel approach to integrate wireless local area network (WLANs) and mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) to the Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) based Internet. In the proposed network architecture, the mobiles, connected as a MANET, employ the optimized link state routing (OLSR) protocol for routing within the MANET. Gateways are used to connect MANETs to the Internet. This paper extends the functionality of OLSR to support mobile IP (MIP). This functionality is essential in a scenario where a node moving into an OLSR MANET needs to auto-configure its care-of-address and to propagate a binding update message containing its new care-of-address to its home agent and its correspondent node(s) located on the Internet. Automatic mode-detection and switching capability is also introduced in each mobile node to facilitate handoffs between WLANs and MANETs. Mobility management across WLANs and MANETs is achieved through mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). A real test-bed is constructed to demonstrate the viability of the proposed approach. Results from a performance evaluation on this test-bed are presented. Efficiency of handoffs between WLANs and MANETs is measured in terms of delay and packet loss. The impact of OLSR based route discovery and packet propagation, and mobile IPv6 features such as movement detection and address auto-configuration on the handoff latency and packet loss are quantified. These performance benchmarks and metrics provide in assessment of the impact of the aforementioned system features on the QoS parameters associated with handoffs.