Evaluation of a Network based Mobility Management Protocol : PMIPv6 Asanga Udugama, Muhammad Umer Iqbal, Umar Toseef, Carmelita Goerg Communication Networks Group – University of Bremen Bremen, Germany [adu | mui | umr | cg ]@comnets.uni-bremen.de Changpeng Fan, Morten Schlaeger Nokia Siemens Networks Berlin, Germany [changpeng.fan | morten.schlaeger ]@nsn.com Abstract—The Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) is a network based mobility management protocol standard that was ratified recently by the Network-based Localized Mobility Management (NetLMM) working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). PMIPv6 is a protocol that uses the same concepts as used in Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6), but modified to operate in the network part only instead of involving the Mobile Node (MN) as well. PMPv6 is claimed to posses a number of advantages over the host based mobility management protocols in use today, above all MIPv6. The main advantage of using PMIPv6 is the freeing up of the mobile host in doing any mobility related activities and thereby saving its resources. The saving of resources may result in their usage for other purposes or even enable otherwise capabilities restricted devices to operate in the PMIPv6 domains. Other advantages include reduced signaling traffic volume and no tunneled packets in the access network. These aspects become very important since the access networks in mobile networks usually are air interfaces. Further, PMIPv6 is also becoming a very attractive mobility management protocol for mobile network operators as seen by its inclusion in current 3 rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardization as a possible alternative mobility management protocol for the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies. In addition to qualitative analyses and comparisons, the work attempts to quantify these advantages to show the achieved benefits. The quantifications are done through measurements in a real test-bed which is installed with a PMIPv6 implementation developed as part of this work. Keywords - Network based mobility management; PMIPv6; NetLMM; Implementation; Evaluation I. INTRODUCTION The tremendous advancements in the field of communication and information technology over the last decades have influenced our lives greatly. Once, the concept of communication was limited to fixed line analogue connections with low data rates and poor transmission quality with the only objective of transmitting voice between the two ends. Today, the scenario has completely changed. High speed connections are available, where transmission of all kinds of multimedia traffic is possible even over wireless interfaces with a touch of a button. The advancements in the field of microelectronics have also provided users with cost effective handheld devices capable of handling multimedia traffic while maintaining mobility. These technological advancements have brought about many new opportunities for users as well as the providers of communication services. At the same time, new challenges such as increased usage of services by users and providing a satisfactory quality of service for all the users need to be addressed. It is becoming obvious that all future technologies and services related to the field of communication and information technology will, to a large extent center around wireless based networks and paradigms. These new technologies will pose new challenges for the service providers. Some of the major issues that will affect selection of those technologies are the available resources in the user’s devices and the cost of bandwidth. Over the last decade “mobility management” has become an important area of research and various new protocols and standards have been developed. Different network architectures have also been proposed to maximize the efficiency of mobility management techniques. Generally, mobility management refers to the techniques through which users of a particular service can move around without noticing any change or disconnection in the service. Mobility management can be either network based or terminal based. In the former only network is involved in the mobility management signaling whereas in the later the terminal also participates. The importance of network based mobility management over terminal based can be understood from the scenario that follows. Consider an Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) network using Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) as its mobility management protocol [1]. Suppose a MIPv6 capable node connects to the network over a wireless interface. The node, after configuring its address sends a location registration message to its home agent. The home agent after processing the location registration sends an acknowledgement message to the mobile node. As long as the Mobile Node (MN) stays connected to the link, it sends and receives periodic location update messages and acknowledgements. Whenever the MN moves and connects to some other part of network, it exchanges these same messages. Furthermore, all the traffic to and from the MN is tunneled traffic, when using basic functionality of MIPv6. MIPv6 is a terminal based mobility management protocol and the following drawbacks can be noted from above. • Periodic exchange of location update messages and tunneled traffic over the air interface reduces available bandwidth This work is partly sponsored by the German Ministry for Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) within the framework ‘Network of Tomorrow’. 978-1-4244-2517-4/09/$20.00 ©2009 IEEE