Performance Comparison Of Host-based IPv6Multihoming And Mobility Protocols

In the heterogeneous wireless network environment, multihoming and mobility management protocols capacitate mobile devices to connect to the Internet in the way of Always Best Connected (ABC). ABC model enables users to choose the best suitable network at anytime. With the advent of multi-interfaced devices, nodes can access to the Internet by different interfaces simultaneously. This is an example of multihoming technology. Multihoming allows each network application to get the best network service and also provides features including ubiquitous access, fault tolerance mechanism and load balancing. While enjoying the multihoming, hosts can move from one network to another. Then it is important to apply mobility management to keep the node’s communication active when handovers occur. Consequently, the combined management of both multihoming and mobility is required in the heterogeneous wireless network environment since hosts are mobile and mulihomed simultaneously. This combined management framework would also help the users to enjoy the ABC model. On the other hand, previous studies were focused on developing mobility and multihoming protocols separately, however, mobility and multihoming are actually not so different, since both of them have the feature of providing session survivability.Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the common host-based multihoming and mobility management protocols and corresponding solutions in the IPv6heterogeneous wireless environment, and to identify the most suitable framework that supports both multihoming and mobility. Thus the paper started out with a comprehensive review of the relevant multihoming and mobility management protocols and solutions. The review was focused on the protocols’ structures and modes of operation. Based on a list of comparative metrics including location management, handover management, security, benefits and drawbacks, this paper then completed a comparative qualitative comparison on the solutions. From this comparison, some protocols that had better performances, and also the simulation scenarios and metrics for the following quantitative study were selected.Finally, the quantitative study was performed by simulations on the OMNeT++simulation platform. The following protocols were involved in the simulation:Mobile IPv6(MIPv6), Host Identity Protocol (HIP), Multiple Care-of Address (MCoA) and Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). Simulation metrics were handover latency (for mobility management protocols) and rehoming time (for multihoming protocols). HIP has shown the best performance in both the qualitative and quantitative comparison. Accordingly, this paper points out that HIP is the best suitable solution that supports both multihoming and mobility management in the IPv6heterogeneous network environment. Additionally, the simulation results have shown that multihomed devices have a better performance compared to single-homed devices when facing network handovers.