S-PMIPv6: Efficient Handover of Proxy Mobile IPv6 by Using SCTP

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), as a network-based mobility management protocol, was released in 2008 by the IETF in RFC 5213 to support IP mobility. But in its handover procedure, network-link disconnection cannot absolutely be avoided. The IETF later proposed Fast Proxy Mobile IPv6 (FPMIPv6 for short) protocol, which was designed primarily to improve the switching process, particularly for reducing its handover latency and packet loss rate, rather than mitigating the probability of network-link disconnection. In fact, no matter how fast a handover is, handover delay does unavoidably exist, which in turn rises the packet loss rate. Therefore, in this study, we propose a new MIPv6 family protocol called SCTP-based Proxy Mobile IPv6 (S-PMIPv6 for short), which integrates F-PMIPv6 with stream control transmission protects (SCTP for short) and route optimization to enhance its IP mobility and achieve the stage of seamless handover.