An Experimental Evaluation of Mobile Node based versus Infrastructure based Handoff Schemes

The rate at which the Internet is becoming mobile is unprecedented. This has increased the demand for continuous connectivity even while moving from one network to another at very high speeds. Moving from one network to another gives rise to a handoff process which often incurs packet losses and severe end to end transport protocol performance degradations for the Mobile Node. Most research on IP mobility has focused on minimizing the delays of the handoff process with network infrastructure based approaches. A different way of minimizing the impact of the handoff is to enable the Mobile Node to connect to multiple access networks simultaneously, allowing it to perform Make-Before-Break handoffs. In this paper, we compare the performance of these two alternatives, focusing on the use of Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6 framework on the infrastructure side and on the other hand Make-Before-Break handoffs using two network interfaces. Both of these schemes require proactive handoffs for optimal performance. The results show that the use of two interfaces for Make-Before-Break handoffs provides increased handoff performance over Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6.