A Mobile-IPv6 extension with multicast for nested mobile networks

A mobile network (MONET) is an entire network which moves as a unit and changes its point of attachment to the Internet, and thus its reachability in the network topology. A MONET may be composed by one or more IP-subnets and is connected to the global Internet via one or more mobile routers. The paper describes a Mobile-IPv6 extension using the multicast paradigm to enable network mobility support. It provides connectivity and reachability for all nodes in the mobile network, even if the mobile router changes its point of attachment to the Internet. The proposed solution consists of multicasting the binding information to all the home agents of all nodes in the mobile network, reducing then the control traffic. Moreover, this solution does not introduce an additional overhead on the data packets, as each home agent of each nested level knows the new location of the nested mobile network. The obtained simulation results show the efficient behaviour of the solution and its performance.