Mobile IP in Wireless Systems

D.R Fernando

Index No : 07000294

Email : dilanrf@gmail.com

Contact No : 0775970929

University of Colombo School of Computing, Sri Lanka

Supervisor: Dr. D.A.S Athukorale.

June 18, 2010

1
 Declaration
I hereby declare that this literature survey report has been prepared by D.R Fernando
based on mainly the reference material listed under the bibliography of this report. No
major components (sentences/paragraphs etc.) of other publications are directly inserted
into this report without being duly cited.

Name of Candidate: D.R Fernando

Signature of Candidate: ..................................................
Date: 18 June, 2010

2
 Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my parents who continuously encouraged me and all the others who
supported with me to work towards the successful completion of this paper.

I wish to extend my sincere gratitude to the supervisor of the Literature Survey Dr.
D.A.S Athukorala for providing me with various resources and guidance throughout the
preparation of this paper.

And I also like to thank Dr. H.L Premarathne (Senior Lecturer and coordinator of the
Literature Survey, University of Colombo School of Computing) for providing guidance
during the survey.

3
 Abstract
Mobile IP is a new emerging protocol which defines the procedures by which
datagrams can be routed to a mobile node, regardless of its current point-of-
attachment to the Internet, and without changing its IP address. Host mobility is
becoming increasingly important because of the recent increase of mobile devices
and the high desire to have continuous network connectivity anywhere the host
happens to be. The development of Mobile IP makes this possible. Here I have
discussed the characteristics of the current Internet draft for Mobile IP, It’s uses,
Problems with the protocol and the future directions.

4
Contents
1 Introduction. 6

2 What is mobile IP. 7

3 Why Mobile IP. 8

4 Features and applications in mobile IP. 9

4.1 Features. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2 Applications of mobile ip. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

5 Entities Related to Mobile IP. 10

6 How Mobile IP works. 11

6.1 Agent Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.2 Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3 Tunneling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

7 Mobility in Ipv6. 14
7.1 Comparison of Mobile IPv4 Vs Mobile Ipv6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

8 Conclusions and Future directions. 15

9 Bibliography 16

List of Figures
1 the mobility spectrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 basic operation of mobile IP [3] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5
1 Introduction.
From students to entrepreneurs, the modern world requires almost everyone to be con-
nected to the Internet for some reason. It may be a simple task like sending an e-mail or
it can be some other complicated task. People use various devices to stay connected, It
may be their personal computer at home, their laptop , a hand held device like a PDA ,
etc .

According to the recent trends the number of mobile (wireless) devices for voice and
data is projected to surpass the number of fixed devices, and mobile communication
will likely emerge as the technology supporting most communication including voice and
video. And mobile data communication will be pervasive in cellular systems such as 3G
and in wireless LAN such as 820.11

And if a device is connected to the INTERNET , it needs to be uniquely identified

from rest of the devices. Because the datagrams intended for that particular device must
not be sent to another device. This unique identification is provided by the IP address.
But the problem with the current internet protocol (IP) is that it was not designed di-
rectly to support host mobility. It was considered that a host’s point of attachment to
the Internet remains unchanged at all times. If the host is moved to another location
its IP information has to be manually reconfigured. This method is time consuming and
error prone. And manual reconfiguration will also terminate the ongoing active commu-
nication sessions.

Therefore as mentioned above with the increasing number of mobile devices set to in-
vade the Internet, a new scalable mechanism was required to accommodate host mobility
within the Internet. Thus came the rise of mobile IP .

6
2 What is mobile IP.
Mobile IP is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard communications pro-
tocol that is designed to allow mobile device users to move from one network to another
while maintaining a permanent IP address [wikipedia] [1]

Mobile IP is an Internet protocol designed to support host mobility It’s goal is to

provide the ability of a host to stay connected to the Internet regardless of its location.
Mobile IP is able to track a mobile host without needing to change the mobile host’s
permanent IP address.

Figure 1: the mobility spectrum

In designing such a protocol several issues are taken into consideration. Since the
current Internet infrastructure largely depends on the existing Internet Protocol (IP)
any new protocol developed must be compatible with large installed base of IPV4 net-
works/hosts. And the protocol to enable mobility must not require massive changes to
router software. Also the mobile node must be able to communicate with other nodes
that do not implement these mobility functions. The idea behind mobile IP is to keep
maintain the node’s permanent IP address and roam between IP networks. And since
mobile IP is based on IP, any device that can support IP can support mobile IP. Also, it
does not require any user intervention to maintain this seamless connectivity.

7
3 Why Mobile IP.
A good analogy for Mobile IP is the development of Mobile phones over the past decade.
Lot of users have moved form the traditional fixed-line telephones to mobile phones which
allow the user to be in motion while talking to someone. This mobility is achieved by
using technology that allows a user to maintain a constant connection to the receiver.

A big difference in this analogy is the fact that it took a long time for mobile phones
to become accepted in the consumer market. The prohibitive cost of cellular technology
and limited areas of coverage discouraged many users from using cellular phones. Mobile
computing is guaranteed to become a breakthrough technology, as acceptance of mobile
devices that can be modified to support Internet access is already popular with con-
sumers. Some manufactures are already providing portable devices that allow wireless
Internet access. Having already found user acceptance, mobile computing may become
popular much faster.

As mentioned, one of the biggest advantages of Mobile IP is that the user can seam-
lessly move about without having to reconnect/reconfigure at every point of attachment.
The main aim of Mobile IP with the aid of the protocols discussed in the previous section
is to provide completely automatic, non-interactive reconnection to network activities
from any point of attachment

8
4 Features and applications in mobile IP.
4.1 Features.
1. No geographical limitations : An user can take the mobile device anywhere without
loosing the Internet connection.

2. No physical connection is required : Mobile IP finds local IP routers and connects

automatically

3. Modifications to other routers and hosts is not required : Other than mobile
nodes/routers, the remaining routers and hosts will still use current IP. Mobile
IP leaves transport and higher layer protocols unaffected.

4. No modifications to the current IP address and IP address format : The current

IP address and address format remains the same.

5. Supports security : Authentication is performed to ensure that rights are being

protected.

4.2 Applications of mobile ip.

1. Tourism : Electronic tour guides.

2. Field Research

3. Collaborative office environments: Employees can freely move about with mobile
devices and be able to interact, share and discuss data on their devices by being
able to meet on a personal level.

4. Mobile IP technology can provide uninterrupted web surfing, Multi media Message
Service (MMS), Short Message Service (SMS), e-mail and file transfer facility. And
telephony value-added services. All of this happens while the user is on the move.

5. Mobile IP technology can also be applied to setup Interactive Voice Response Sys-
tems. Multimedia gaming web sites, automated stock shares and other online
finance portals, ERP systems, voice portals, and voice enabled websites.

6. Mobile IP technology can enable the bridging of various overlapping wired as well
as wireless communication environments such as Internet enabled LANs, WLANs,
WiMAX, Wi-Fi systems, IP over Digital Video Broadcast, and IP over MPEG

9
5 Entities Related to Mobile IP.
1. Mobile Node (MN) : A host or router that may changes its point of attachment
from one network or subnetwork to another through the Internet. This entity is
per-assigned a fixed home address on a home network, which other correspondent
hosts will use to address their packets to, regardless of its current location.

2. Home Agent (HA) : A router that maintains a list of registered mobile nodes in a
visitor list. It is used to forward mobile node-addressed packets to the appropriate
local network when the mobile nodes are away from the home. After checking
with the current mobility bindings for a particular mobile node, it encapsulates
datagrams and sends it to the mobile host’s current temporary address.

3. Foreign Agent (FA) : A router that assists a locally reachable mobile node that is
away from its home network. It delivers information between the mobile node and
the home agent.

4. Care-of-Address (COA) : An address which identifies the mobile node’s current

location It can be viewed as the end of the end of a tunnel directed towards a
mobile node. It can be assigned either dynamically or associated with it’s foreign
agent.

5. Correspondent Node (CN) : This node sends the packets which are addressed to
the mobile node.

6. Home address : A permanent IP address that is assigned to a mobile node. It

remains unchanged regardless of where the mobile node is attached to the Internet.

7. Mobility Agent : An agent which supports mobility, It could either a home agent
or a foreign agent .

8. Tunnel : The path followed by a datagram while it is encapsulated. While it is

encapsulated, a datagram is routed to a knowledgeable decapsulating agent, which
decapsulates the datagram and then correctly delivers it to its ultimate destination.
[2]

10
6 How Mobile IP works.
IP addresses are generally associated with a fixed locations such as a router or a client
computer. IP routes datagrams from a source to a destination by allowing routers to for-
ward packets from incoming network interfaces to outgoing interfaces according to routing
tables. These routing tables typically maintain the next-hop information for each desti-
nation IP address, which is based on the number of networks to which that IP address
is connected. The network number is calculated from the IP address by taking off some
of the low order bits. Thus, the IP address specifies the nodes point of attachment. To
maintain existing transport-layer connections the node must maintain a single IP address.

In Transfer Control Protocol (TCP), the most popular protocol for Internet connec-
tions, the connections are indexed by a dotted-quad that is unique to someones geo-
graphical home address. This set of numbers is what allows for delivery of a datagram.
If any of these numbers are changed then the connection will most likely be lost. Correct
delivery of datagrams to the node depends on the network address contained within the
nodes IP address.

If the node is mobile, packets sent to this node may never make it as, logically, mo-
bility will force a new IP address to be associated with the node every time it changes
its connection point. Constantly changing IP address of a node will make transparent
mobility impossible.[4]

Mobile IP was designed to solve this problem by allowing the node to use two IP
addresses:

• Home address

• Care-of address

Now lets look in detail how mobile IP works.

The mobile IP process has three main phases.

1. Agent Discovery : Discovering the care-of address

2. Registration : Registering the care-of address

3. Tunneling : Tunneling to the care-of address [5]

6.1 Agent Discovery

The Mobile IP discovery process has been built on top of an existing standard protocol,
Router Advertisement. Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) router discovery mes-
sages are known as Router Advertisement. Router Advertisement enables hosts attached

11
to multicast or broadcast networks to discover the IP address of their neighboring routers.
Each router periodically multicasts a Router Advertisement from each of its multicast
interfaces, announcing the IP address of that interface. Hosts discover the addresses of
their neighboring routers by simply listening for advertisements

Mobile IP does not modify the original fields of existing router advertisements but
simply extends them to associate mobility functions. Therefore a router advertisement
can carry information about default routers, just as before, and in addition carry further
information about one or more care-of addresses. When the router advertisements are
extended to also contain the needed care-of address, they are known as agent adver-
tisements. Home agents and foreign agents typically broadcast agent advertisements at
regular intervals of time. If the mobile node needs to get a care-of address and does not
wish to wait for the periodic advertisement, the mobile node can broadcast or multicast
a solicitation that will be answered by any foreign agent or home agent that receives it.
Home agents use agent advertisements to make themselves known, even if they do not
offer any care-of addresses.

Mobile nodes use router advertisements to detect any changes in the state of mobility
agents available at the current point of attachment. If advertisements are no longer
detectable from a foreign agent that previously had offered a care-of address to the
mobile node, the mobile node should presume that the foreign agent is no longer within
range of the mobile nodes network interface. In this situation, the mobile node should
beginsearching for a new care-of address, or possibly use a care-of address known from
advertisements it is still receiving. The mobile node may choose to wait for another
advertisement if it has not received any recently advertised care-of address, or it may
send an agent solicitation. Agent discovery messages are not required to be authenticated

6.2 Registration
And after receiving the Care-of-Address, it registers its COA with its home agent. The
registration process can be performed directly form the mobile node, or relayed by the
Foreign Agent to the Home Agent, depending on whether the Care-of-Address was dy-
namically assigned or associated with its Foreign Agent. To complete the registration
procedure between both two parties, two steps should be performed. The home agent
receives the registration request from the mobile node, and the mobile node receives the
registration reply form the home agent. The registration process is secured. The home
agent must be certain that the registration was originated by the mobile node and not
by some malicious node.

6.3 Tunneling
After the above two process gets complete, The mobile node sends packets using it’s home
IP address effectively maintaining the appearance that it is always on its home network.

12
Even while the mobile node is roaming in foreign IP networks. It’s movements are trans-
parent to correspondent nodes. Datagrams destined to the mobile node are routed to
it’s home network, where the Home Agent intercepts and tunnels the datagrams to the
Care-of-Address of the mobile node. In tunneling there are two main functions, Encap-
sulation of the data packet to reach the tunnel endpoint, and decapsulation when the
packet is delivered at that endpoint.

Encapsulation : The process of enclosing an IP datagram within another IP header

which contains the Care-of-Address of the mobile node. The IP datagram itself remains
intact throughout the enclosing process.

Decapsulation : The process of removing the outermost IP header of the incoming

packets so that the enclosed datagram can be accessed and delivered to the intended
destination. It’s the reverse process of encapsulation.

Figure 2: basic operation of mobile IP [3]

13
7 Mobility in Ipv6.
IPv6 was developed to include enhancements from IPv4 and many new technologies that
are missing from IPv4. Mobile IPv6 contains many features that were sorely missed
in Mobile IPv4. Principally the mobility support for Internet devices in possible and
standardized for both IP protocol versions, IPv4 and IPv6, but due to the enhanced
functionality and later design of IPv6 some features concerning the mobility support
have been integrated more efficiently in Mobile IPv6 when compared to Mobile IPv4.

7.1 Comparison of Mobile IPv4 Vs Mobile Ipv6

• A mobile node requires a new care-of address every time it changes its point of
attachment. There is a possibility under IPv4 that availability of these addresses
becomes a problem. Due to the huge number of addresses available under IPv6,
assigning addresses will never be a problem.

• Employing Stateless Address Auto configuration and Neighbor Discovery mech-

anisms Mobile IPv6 neither needs DHCP nor foreign agents to configure care-of
addresses. Using Neighbor Discovery, Mobile IPv6 does not need to use ARP; this
improves overall robustness of the protocol.

• Using anycast address of IPv6 enables a node to send a packet to one out of several
systems having this anycast address assigned to one of their interfaces. Mobile IPv6
makes efficient use of this mechanism for the dynamic host discovery mechanism by
sending a binding update to the home agent anycast address and getting a response
form exactly one home agent. This is absent from IPv4.

• Mobile IPv6 can use IPsec for all security requirements, like authentication, data
integrity protection, and replay protection. This is perhaps the biggest difference
between Mobile IPv4 and Mobile IPv6.

• Route optimization is greatly improved and is a fundamental part of Mobile IPv6.

Mobile IPv6 route optimization can operate securely even without pre-arranged
security associations. It is expected that route optimization can be deployed on a
global scale between all mobile nodes and hosts that send data to them.

• Packets in Mobile IPv4 require encapsulation if the mobile node is away from
home, packets in Mobile IPv6 are sent using a Mobile IPv6 routing header, doing
away with the need for encapsulation/ decapsulation techniques. This reduces the
amount of resulting overhead compared to Mobile IPv4.

14
8 Conclusions and Future directions.
Due to it’s security and performance issues Mobile IP is not in heavy use today. But with
the number of mobile device users set to surpass fixed device users, and with the rapid
development of Mobile IP it will become a protocol as popular as the Internet Protocol
(IP). Since Ipv6 provides more options for mobile IP It is possible that the deployment
pace of Mobile IP will track that of Ipv6. Both IPv6 and Mobile IP have little direct
effect on the protocol stack, and application designers should find this to be an acceptable
programming environment. And there is currently a lot of research and implementations
of Mobile IP under Linux.

Everything depends on the readiness of platform and router vendors to implement

Mobile IP. Indications are there are most major vendors are already dedicating a lot of
time and money to the mobile IP field which has enormous potential.

15
9 Bibliography
References
[1] Wikipedia. ”mobile ip”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile IP, 2010.

[2] Cisco Systems. ”introduction to mobile ip [ip tunneling]”.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/solutions docs/mobile ip/mobil ip.html,
2010.

[3] IETF. ”ip mobility support for ipv4”. http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3344, 2002.

[4] Ollikainen. V. ”mobile ip explained”. http://www.tml.tkk.fi/Opinnot/Tik-

111.550/1999/Esitelmat/MobileIP/Mobip.html, 1999.

[5] Cisco Systems. ”the internet protocol journal”.

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived issues/ipj 4-2/mobile
ip.html, 2010.

[6] Abdul Sakib Mondal. ”mobile ip: present state and future”. 2003.

16