Preliminary Binding: An Extension to Proxy Mobile IPv6 for Inter-Technology Handover

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) recently approved the proxy mobile IPv6 standard for network- based localized mobility management. Unlike host-based mobility management, the network handles mobility signaling on behalf of mobile nodes in proxy mobile IPv6, i.e., the mobile nodes are not involved in mobility management, hence have no control on handover-related signaling. The current specification of proxy mobile IPv6 defines basic operations for registration, deregistration, and tunnel management. As mobile nodes have no control on mobility management, the timing for handover signaling is not synchronized with the mobile node's ability to send and receive packets on the handover target link. This turns out to be an issue for mobile nodes being equipped with multiple network interfaces and performing handover between these access technologies (inter-technology handover), as the configuration of the target network interface and the associated link takes time. In this work, we investigate technical issues that occur during an inter-technology handover in proxy mobile IPv6. We demonstrate through experimental performance evaluation that an inter-technology handover in proxy mobile IPv6 can cause considerable handover delay and packet loss. We propose an efficient extension to proxy mobile IPv6 to eliminate delay and packet loss during an inter-technology handover. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed extension through an experimental performance evaluation.