Providing multi-homing support in IP access networks

Amongst the activities of the European Commission IST research project-MIND is extensive consideration of the multi-homing issues in IP access networks. Analysis of the various multi-homing scenarios reveals diverse aspects of multi-homing relevant to both the operations of the access network as well as the hosts connected to it. The originality of the work presented in this paper arises from the uniqueness of the multi-homing setup in IP access networks that support terminal mobility such as the one developed in the BRAIN project and the ad hoc and self-organising network extensions developed in MIND. This paper presents a part of our work on multi-homing by showing the required architectural support from the involved network elements and utilisation of the existing general mechanisms for the support of IP connectivity.