Unified Local Mobility Management

To enhance the mobility of nodes within an access network, various local mobility management protocols have been suggested. All these protocols have their strengths and drawbacks. The deployment of these protocols is a chicken and egg problem, since the access network and the mobile nodes must support the same protocol. This paper presents a new protocol designed to replace the communication between the access network and the mobile nodes in existing and future local mobility management schemes. The protocol allows mobile nodes to log into and roam within any access network regardless of the local mobility scheme used internally in the network.