Mobile IP Handover for WLAN

Abstract: The past few years have seen great increases in the use of portable devices like laptops, palmtops, etc. This has also led to the dramatic increase demand on wireless local area networks (WLAN) due to the flexibility and ease of use that it offers. Mobile IP and handover are important issues to be considered as these devices move within and between different networks and still have to maintain connectivity. It is, therefore, imperative to ensure seamless mobile IP handover for these devices as they move about. In this thesis we undertake a survey to describe the real processes involved in mobile IP handover in WLAN environment for different scenarios. Our work also identifies individual sources of delay during the handoff process, the sum total of which makes up the total latency. Other factors that could militate against the aim of having a seamless handoff in an inter-subnet network roaming were also considered as well as some proposed solutions. These factors are security, packet loss and triangle routing.