QOMIFA: A QoS Enabled Mobilty Management Framework in All-IP Networks

A main challenge in all-IP networks is how to deliver real-time services with suitable QoS while moving in the network. Mobile IP (MIP) is the standard mobility management protocol in IP system. However, MIP is unsuitable for QoS-sensitive applications. Mobile IP fast authentication protocol (MIFA) is proposed to shorten the handoff time. Although, MIFA presents a good solution to provide seamless mobility, it supports no QoS. Resource reservation protocol (RSVP) is a known IP-based reservation mechanism. It is widely used to reserve resources on a certain path of routers throughout the Internet. However, RSVP does not notice the mobility of mobile devices. In this paper we propose a new QoS-enabled mobility management framework for IP-based networks. In this framework we integrate MIFA with RSVP to support fast QoS re-reservation during and after the movement. We extend RSVP by adding a new object called mobility object. MIFA messages are encapsulated in this object. Our proposal enables the correspondent node to use the old path while the new one is in progress. Thus, the time required to establish a new reservation is hidden from the application. Additionally, our proposal allows simple network architectures and doesn't introduce any new entities to the network