Intelligent Mobility Support for IPv6

Hierarchical MIPv6 (HMIPv6) is proposed to improve the system performance of mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). However, HMIPv6 cannot outperform MIPv6 in all scenarios because of its double-registration when a user roams across regions and the longer packet delivery latency. Therefore, to select a proper mobility management scheme between MIPv6 and HMIPv6 becomes an interesting issue, for its potentials in enhancing the capacity and scalability of the system. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to analyze the applicability of MIPv6 and HMIPv6. Based on this model, we design an intelligent mobility support (IMS) scheme that selects the better alternative between MIPv6 and HMIPv6 for a user according to its changing mobility and service characteristics. When HMIPv6 is adopted, IMS chooses the best mobility anchor point and regional size to optimize the system performance. Numerical results illustrate the impact of some key parameters on the applicability of MIPv6 and HMIPv6. Finally, it is demonstrated that IMS outperforms MIPv6 and HMIPv6.