Port address translation based route optimization for mobile IP

The current mobility management protocol mobile IP (MIP) specifies the use of a home agent (HA) in forwarding datagrams to/from the mobile node (MN). This often leads to the usage of either triangular routing or reverse tunneling. Both these modes of communication introduce additional delay in data transmission between a corresponding node (CN) and a MN, in addition to the wastage of network resources. IETF has proposed certain extensions to MIP to support route optimization. A drawback of the proposed route optimization extensions to MIP is the requirement for the CN to be mobility aware. In this paper, the authors propose a port address translation based route optimization scheme. The proposed route optimization scheme attempts to reduce the overhead and delay involved with traditional mobile communication by means of using port address translation (PAT) and routing the packet using an optimal path. Preliminary analysis carried out by the authors indicates a significant performance improvement compared to that of normal MIP and other route optimization techniques.