Evaluation of Mobile IP Regional Registration with Fast Optimized Smooth Handoff

Abstract

Mobile IP is one of the solutions for connecting mobile nodes without breaking ongoing communications. Mobile IP uses two IP addresses: one is home address and another is care-of address which is used when the mobile node is moved to another network. Although original mobile IP can support seamless roaming, it still has many problems such as packet loss during handoff and handoff latency. Those problems usually effect on the performance of mobile IP. In mobile IP regional registration, a Gateway Foreign Agent (GFA) is added at just one hop away from foreign networks. Registration process within the same domain does not need to connect with the home agent and the GFA performs as local home agent for the mobile node. In Fast Optimized Smooth Handoff (FOSH), the foreign agents share information of mobile nodes by sending binding updates to each other. By sending registration request message to all entries in the Cache, the mobile node can perform an early registration. In our proposed method, FOSH mechanism is applied to mobile IP Regional Registration in order to reduce the number of packet loss that is lost at foreign agents during handoff. Network Simulator Version 2 (NS2) is used to implement the proposed method and output trace file is manipulated in order to evaluate the performance of mobile IP in terms of packet loss and packet delay. The number of hops between the home agent and the mobile node and the speed of the mobile node is varied as the functions of the performance of the mobile IP in terms of packet delay and number of packet loss.