Special issue: mobile IP

Mobile Computing that allows networked communication while a user is on the move is revolutionizing the way we use computers today. New protocols have been developed in order to meet the multifunction requirements of both telecommunication and data communications. Protocols such as W-CDMA, CDMA-2000, 802.11a, 802.11b, or 802.11g, were designed to meet different needs in mobile networks. While Internet technologies have succeeded in overcoming the barriers of time and distance, they have yet to fully accommodate the increasing mobile computer usage. This is particularly true of the emerging 3G mobile networks. The use of 3G networks are not based on only one standard, but several such as CDMA-2000, EDGE, and WCDMA. There is a need for a common mobility solution to be adopted that would include independence of access network technologies and common solutions for fixed and wireless networks. Mobile IP is a promising technology to serve this purpose. It provides seamless mobility solution among the diversity of access. Mobile IP requires new network elements and specifies a protocol for the interaction of the new components and the host. In the mobile network area, the trend is to move from traditional circuit-switched systems to packetswitched programmable networks that integrate both voice and packet services, eventually evolving toward an all-IP network. Both RFC3775 (Mobility Support in IPv6) and RFC 3776 (Using IPsec to Protect Mobile IPv6 Signaling between Mobile Nodes and Home Agents) were released in June 2004. Mobile IP has been perceived as the potential future mobility standard. The Call for Papers attracted 30 submissions from Asia, Europe, and the America covering a lot of topics in the field of the Mobile IP networks. Each paper was carefully evaluated by three reviewers. This careful evaluation process has allowed us to select 11 high quality research papers. Paper seven is an invited review/survey paper. We strongly believe that the selected papers make a significant contribution to researchers, practitioners, and students working in the area of the Wireless Communications and in the specific field of Mobile IP. We are grateful to authors for their research contributions in this special issue. Our special thanks go to the WCMC Editorial Board, Prof. Mohsen Guizani, and Prof. Hsiao-Hwa Chen for their supports throughout the publication process. Finally, the Guest Editors wish to gratefully acknowledge all those who have generously given their time to review the papers submitted to this Special Issue. The 11 accepted papers can be grouped into three categories. Five papers relate to mobility management and home agent assignment. Four papers are concerned with handoff issues. The last two papers deal with MANET. The first paper, ‘An Integrated Performance Model of TCP and Mobility Management Protocols’ by Antonios Argyriou presents a joint performance evaluation model of TCP and TFRC, with the underlying IP-based mobility protocols. Stochastic models are developed that can characterize the protocol performance during handoff between heterogeneous wireless networks like WLAN, cellular, or WMAN. The second paper, ‘On the Performance of Proactive Mobile IPv6 for Context-aware all-IP Wireless Access Networks’ by Theo Pagtzis, Jon Crowcroft, and Keith Clark contrasts the efficiency of proactive context-state establishment, between candidate points of attachment (PoAs), against reactive MIPv6 standard practices over handoff delay, jitter, and associated packet loss. Departing from reactive MIPv6 standards, this study brings new insights towards