Mobile IPv6 Fast Handovers

Mobile IPv6 enables a Mobile Node to maintain its connectivity to the Internet when moving from an Access Router to another, a process referred to as handover. During this time, the Mobile Node is unable to send or receive packets due to both link switching delay and IP protocol operations. The "handover latency" resulting from standard Mobile IPv6 procedures, namely, movement detection, new Care of Address configuration and Binding Update, is often unacceptable to real-time traffic such as Voice over IP. Reducing the handover latency could be beneficial to non real-time, throughput-sensitive applications as well. This document specifies a protocol to improve handover latency due to Mobile IPv6 procedures. This document does not address improving the link switching latency.