A discussion on software-defined handovers in Hierarchical MIPv6 networks

Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) and its variants provide mobility support to the mobile nodes within an IP network. Hierarchical MIPv6 (HMIPv6) is an improvement on legacy MIPv6 which uses layered approach to provide low cost signaling in the environments where handovers take place frequently. Because HMIPv6 is a host-assisted handover mechanism, the wireless link of the mobile node acts as a serious bottleneck on its performance. This paper seeks to use the newly developed notion of software-defined networks (SDN) to modify HMIPv6. The idea is to use the SDN concepts during the handover process to minimize the involvement of the mobile node.