Mobility-Aware RSVP: A framework for improving the performance of multimedia services over wireless IP-based mobile networks Ahmad Belhoul 1 , Y. Ahmet S ßekerciog ˘lu * , Nallasamy Mani Center for Telecommunications and Information Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, 3800, Victoria, Australia article info Article history: Received 22 August 2007 Received in revised form 21 October 2008 Accepted 2 November 2008 Available online 3 December 2008 Keywords: Mobile IP QoS RSVP Voice-over-IP Video-over-IP abstract This paper proposes the Mobility-Aware Resource Reservation Protocol (MARSVP) in which mobility and QoS signaling are performed as a single functional block. The key concept of MARSVP is to convey mobil- ity-specific information (binding updates and their associated acknowledgments) by using newly defined RSVP objects embedded in existing RSVP messages. An appealing feature of MARSVP is that it adheres to the current RSVP standard (RFC 2205) and thus requires minimal changes to end nodes without affecting any of the conventional RSVP routers in between. The proposed mechanism is evaluated using a simula- tion model for application-level performance and an analytical model for network-level signaling cost. Simulation results indicate a 27.9% improvement in QoS interruption when using Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6), 12.5% when using Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6), and no improvement when using Fast Handovers for MIPv6 (FMIPv6). On the network-level, signaling cost savings of 9.4% and 11.9% are achieved for MIPv6 and HMIPv6, respectively, while FMIPv6 achieves savings of 17.9% when using Voice-over-IP traf- fic and 26.7% for Video-over-IP traffic. The results of the conducted studies indicate MARSVP’s superiority to conventional RSVP when deployed over wireless networks. Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction One of the most significant technologies introduced in the past decade is wireless access networks. Before their conception, the fastest wireless speed available to the consumer was through a cell phone at a humble data rate of 11.4 kbps. Today the 802.11 group of technologies are the most widely adopted, offering high-speed wireless access ranging from 2 to 54 Mbps. Other imminent tech- nologies include 802.11n (capable of delivering data rates up to 248 Mbps) and 802.16 (more commonly known as WiMAX; theo- retically capable of delivering data rates of 70 Mbps up to a range of 50 km). As the demand for wireless connectivity increased, the Tele- communications industry has adapted accordingly by launching new and innovative systems. Such innovations include the promis- ing Mobile Voice-over-IP collaboration (Mobile VoIP) in which a user with a dual-mode (cellular and Wi-Fi) smart-phone can seam- lessly roam between mobile and VoIP networks when entering into a hot spot. This solution is appealing since it capitalizes on the cost effectiveness of VoIP in addition to delivering data services to mo- bile subscribers. Other innovations include Video-over-IP (VIP) applications such as Mobile TV, used to broadcast real-time TV channels to the end user’s mobile device, in addition to Video- on-Demand (VOD) and video conferencing. The principal setback of such real-time applications, however, is quality. For example, VoIP calls are of a noticeably lower quality than conventional PSTN calls. A study [20] which analyzed the quality and reliability of more than 154,000 VoIP calls and 9000 public-network calls confirms that although the overall reliability of VoIP has improved, it still performs below the PSTN standards. This difference in quality is largely due to the nondeterministic de- lay experienced by each IP packet over the Internet infrastructure. This issue is confronted when delivering any real-time service over an IP infrastructure, and is hence not restricted to VoIP applica- tions. The Quality of Service (QoS) concept has been developed to address this issue: it accomplishes tighter timing guarantees by incorporating prioritization of packets and differentiating the way they are handled by the network entities. Packets that belong to streaming services (such as VoIP and VIP) are given a higher pri- ority at intermediate routers than less time-sensitive applications. This prioritization is managed by the Resource Reservation Proto- col (RSVP) [2]. RSVP, however, is purely a signaling protocol and does not perform its own routing but rather complements the underlying routing protocols such as Mobile IP (MIP) [18]; which is the current standardized mobility protocol by the Internet Engi- neering Task Force (IETF) to facilitate mobility of end nodes in a wireless environment. 0140-3664/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2008.11.027 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 399053503; fax: +61 399053454. E-mail addresses: ahmad.belhoul@ieee.org (A. Belhoul), Asekerci@ieee.org (Y.A. S ßekerciog ˘lu), nallasamy.mani@eng.monash.edu.au (N. Mani). 1 This research is partly supported by Emirates Telecommunications Corporation. Computer Communications 32 (2009) 569–582 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computer Communications journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comcom