Extensive performance evaluation of IPv6 fast signaling in a wireless LAN cellular environment

In the near future, the IP is expected to become the main carrier of traffic to mobile and wireless nodes. Convergence of wireless networking and IP networking more and more requires solutions for transporting realtime application data to IP enabled mobile devices and mobile networks. Even though the basic mobile IPv6 protocol suite performs sufficient in macro environments with non realtime traffic, seamless mobility requires some more enhanced protocol procedures in between the mobile node and the involved network entities. Limiting the effect of handovers has the potential to considerably improve handover performance in terms of latency, packet loss, signaling overhead, and scalability. This contribution is going to present an extensive simulation study on the performance of an IPv6 fast signaling approach in a mobile IPv6 environment. The demonstrated simulation scenario comprises up to 70 mobile nodes that communicate in accordance with the popular IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN standard. In order to be able to verify the results, this paper also introduces empirical outcomes gained from an experimental wireless IPv6 testbed