Supporting vertical handover by using a pastry peer-to-peer overlay network

Vertical handovers (VHO) are expected to be a key feature in beyond 3G (B3G) networks. This paper presents a pastry-based P2P overlay network for supporting vertical handover in B3G networks. The P2P overlay is used to quickly locate attachment points (APs) for mobile entities and to rapidly retrieve the configuration and coverage information of these APs. The advantage of the P2P-based solution is its distributed nature, its scalability, and its self-organizing capability