IP Mobility Optimizations (Mob Opts) 

The dramatic increase in wireless and mobile devices coupled with the
desire to connect them to the ever-growing Internet is leading to a
Mobile Internet, where support for terminal mobility would soon be taken
for granted. While basic protocol support and some enhancements are
being standardized IETF, there is a need for significant research
(both empirical and analytical) to better understand mobility on the
Internet. For instance, a successful handover of a terminal from one
point of attachment to another at least includes a new link establishment
(including link-level (re)authentication), IP connectivity establishment
(including network-layer (re)authentication), and new route
establishment (when the handover leads to a subnet change). In addition,
since a handover almost inevitably affects transport protocol
performance, mechanisms to smoothen handover are of interest. These
considerations become even more challenging when a terminal handovers
across different access networks, such as from a Wireless LAN
to CDMA or to GPRS. Hence, it would be extremely useful to understand
these problems as the transition to the Mobile Internet accelerates.

The objective of this research group is two-fold. Establish a forum
for Wireless and IP Mobility researchers to investigate key and
interesting problems in the field. The findings on these problems
should benefit the community at large, but especially the
standardization bodies like the IETF and the IEEE. And, help establish
a uniform platform or testbed that researchers could use for
experimentation as common tools, scenarios and methodologies provide
more accurate performance benchmarking. A more ambitious, longer-term
goal is to become a catalyst for research in Mobile
Inter-networking. 

The group shall address the following research topics:

o analysis of Mobile IP Route Optimization considering such
  parameters as traffic pattern, link conditions, topology etc. with
  the goal of arriving at conclusions on its usage

o investigation of securing handovers by making use of access
  authentication parameters, focussing initially on IEEE 802
  systems. And, applying the adopted security for Fast Handovers
  designed in the Mobile IP group in the IETF. 

o improving re-authentication latency during handovers, and
  subsequently transport protocol performance

o evaluation of existing and new mechanisms for discovering, and
  selecting a target base station and/or router for handover

o examination of the feasibility of generic mechanisms that allow
  tighter integration of the link layer with the IP layer for
  improving handover performance

o alternative mechanisms for discovering a Mobility Anchor Point (MAP)
  in Hierarchical Mobile IP (HMIP), as well as mechanisms for handling
  the effects of single point of failure

The research group addresses questions of an evolutionary nature,
making use of the IP Mobility architecture (i.e., Mobile IP and
handover optimizations such as Fast Handover and Hierarchical Mobile
IP) developed in the Mobile IP Working Group. In particular, radically
new architectures (e.g., based on the separation of identity and
location) are outside the scopeof this group. 


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