Sharing multiple paths for temporarily connected mobile computers using Mobile IP

We propose a method to increase communication speed and reliability between mobile computers and the Internet by using multiple links. The method uses multiple links between a temporary group of mobile computers and the Internet to deliver IP packets between a mobile computer in the group and its correspondent host on the Internet. We modified a function of a mobile EP home agent to distribute packets to the multiple links, and designed management protocols for the group of mobile computers and the home agent. We implemented the protocol on Linux and tested it on an emulated wireless network and a real IMT-2000 network. The results showed the that sharing multiple wireless links with our method increases the throughput almost n times of each wireless link between mobile computers and the Internet when the bit rate of the link was sufficiently slow against the bit rate of the link for the temporary group of mobile computers.