BGP-MX: Border Gateway Protocol with Mobility Extensions

The inter-domain routing protocol for the Internet, i.e., BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), was designed for statically configured land-based networks, which experience infrequent topology changes. As a result, BGP is not suited for an airborne network environment, where the topology of the network is constantly changing because of domain mobility. This paper presents an innovative approach called Border Gateway Protocol with Mobility Extensions (BGP-MX) that enables inter-domain communication for mobile domains that are part of the Airborne Network (AN) environment. BGP-MX allows high-mobility networking systems to stay connected to each other and to the global Internet without adversely impacting the scalability of the global network. The paper presents the design of a prototype implementation of BGP-MX as well as the results of laboratory based experiments for characterizing the performance of BGP-MX.