Routing Protocol Evaluation for IP Mobility

Abstract : Since IP is becoming the leading protocol to interconnect heterogeneous networks, much effort is done to investigate if Internet technology can be usefully employed for military applications. This paper deals with some aspects related to mobility management in tactical environments with deployable networks. Less effort has been done to study the applicability of Mobile IP in tactical networks although this topic would give nodes a great flexibility and allow them to use all existent low-cost TCP/IP based applications. In order to verify performance of Mobile IP in tactical environments a network, composed by three LANs, has been made up and the mobility agents have been implemented on the nodes and tested. Then many tests have been performed in order to verify the behaviour of Mobile IP on links with different bit-rates and with nodes moving at different speeds. It has been evidenced that the control traffic, needed to update the routing tables, and mobility management depend on link speed. Also nodes' speed influences time needed to perform a data transfer. However the results demonstrates that, with some adjustments, Mobile IP can be usefully employed within certain limits in tactical networks. The experimental results have also been compared to those obtained by means of a specific model developed with the network simulator software OPNET and agreements with simulation results have been verified.