Seamless mobility management based on proxy servers

We devise an integrated wireless network architecture using proxy servers to support mobility management. The technique takes advantage of the existing functionalities of proxy servers to provide mobility support for applications such as Web browsing and ftp, without modifying the IP protocol stack of the mobile host. The architecture uses proxy servers to force all packets originating from mobile hosts to a close-by mobility-aware router so that the latter can maintain active data connections during handoffs across different networks. By deploying multiple proxy and mobility-aware router pairs and by assigning mobile hosts to proxy servers dynamically, the proposed architecture provides efficient mobility management functionalities, and is inherently scalable.