Performance comparison of multihoming and mobility protocols in IPv6 heterogeneous network environment

Abstract: Multihoming and mobility protocols enable computing devices to stay always best connected (ABC) to the Internet in the heterogeneous wireless environment. The ABC concept affords users the ability to choose the best available access networks and devices that best suit their needs, at any given point in time. With the emergence of multi-interfaced terminals, a mobile node may connect to different access networks simultaneously through multiple interfaces. This is called multihoming, and it allows a user to enjoy the best access for each application as well as other benefits such as fault tolerance, ubiquitous access and load balancing. Also, while the mobile node is moving from one wireless network to another, mobility management is important in keeping the node’s communication active during handover events. Therefore, the heterogeneous wireless environment requires the associated management of both multihoming and mobility since the mobile hosts are mobile and multihomed at the same time. Consequently, the purpose of our research is to compare the prevailing multihoming and mobility management protocols and corresponding implementations in the IPv6 heterogeneous wireless environment, and to identify the suitable protocol framework that supports both multihoming and mobility. The research started out with the study of the prominent host-based multihoming and mobility management protocols and solutions in IPv6. It then proceeded with a comparative qualitative review of the identified multihoming and mobility protocols according to their mechanisms, modes of operation, benefits and drawbacks. From the qualitative review, we identified suitable protocols that showed better performance for management of mobility and/or multihoming. Moreover, this provided a basis for defining the relevant simulation metrics for our comparative quantitative simulation analysis. The quantitative analysis was carried out using simulations on the OMNeT++ software platform, with the objective of comparing the performance of the studied multihoming and mobility protocols. Simulation scenarios were designed for mobility and multihoming cases, implemented and run using pertinent simulation protocol models of OMNeT++. The performance evaluation was investigated in terms of handover latency and rehoming time for mobility and multihoming protocols respectively. The simulation survey focused on the following protocols:Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6), Multiple Care-of Address (MCoA), Host Identity Protocol (HIP) and Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). Both the qualitative analysis and the results from the simulation study have shown that HIP has the best performance for mobility and multihoming management. Accordingly, our research has identified HIP as the best suitable framework that supports both multihoming and mobility management in IPv6 heterogeneous network environment. In addition, this project has demonstrated that multihomed nodes with multiple addresses experience less impact on real-time communication in case network failures or mobile movements compared to single-homed nodes.