Evaluation of a Network Based Mobility Management Protocol: PMIPv6

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.