Virtual Access Points for Transparent Mobility in Wireless LANs

Mobility management in WiFi networks is still an open issue today: there is no standard method defined, and client station mobility is handled either via proprietary protocols, or simply by re- association. However, managing mobility in an infrastructure network is utterly important for several reasons: controlling delay and jitter in communications, managing clients from the network, optimizing performance. We propose the concept of virtual access points to manage mobile station in infrastructure networks. In this scheme, stations are not aware that they move, and all the complexity is pushed back inside the network. It is then possible to control mobility from a global point of vue, to optimize network resources for mobile stations, hence providing a better quality of service. Finally, this scheme is compatible with existing clients without any hardware nor software modification.