Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) has been standardized for mobility management in the IPv6 network. When a mobile node changes its point of attachment in the IPv6 network, it experiences a time due MIPv6 procedures when it cannot receive or send any packets. This time called the handover delay might also cause packet loss resulting undesired quality-of-service degradation for various types of applications. The minimization of this delay is especially important for real-time applications. In this chapter we present a fast handover method called the flow-based fast handover for Mobile IPv6 (FFHMIPv6) to speed up the MIPv6 handover processes. FFHMIPv6 employs flow information and IPv6-in-IPv6 tunneling for the fast redirection of the flows during the MIPv6 handover. Also, FFHMIPv6 employs a temporary hand-off-address to minimize the upstream connectivity. We present the performance results comparing the FFHMIPv6 method to other fundamental handover methods with Network Simulator 2 (ns-2) and Mobile IPv6 for Linux (MIPL) network.
Performance Analysis of Fast Handover in Mobile IPv6 Networks