An end-system approach to mobility management for 4G networks and its application to thin-client computing

This paper describes work centred around providing greater autonomy for mobile nodes to roam in Mobile IPv6 wireless networks based on a new handoff mechanism. This technique, called the Client-based Handoff, enables mobile nodes to roam in foreign wireless networks without having to be controlled by the network infrastructure. The mechanism incorporates three algorithms: a router advertisement cache, the invocation of TCP mechanisms and techniques to handle subnetwork outages in order to reduce packet loss and handoff latency. An experimental Mobile IPv6 testbed was developed to evaluate the proposed mechanism and is described in this paper. The testbed supports both horizontal and vertical handoffs. Experimental results are also presented.The outcome of this approach was used to support mobile thin-client computing using a Virtual Network Computer (VNC) environment. Relevant experiments were carried out and the results show a compelling improvement in throughput of up to 50% compared to a VNC environment without the supporting architecture.

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