Performance Analysis of a Secure Seamless Handover Mechanism in All-IP Networks

Beyond third generation or B3G is the next generation of mobile networks that will comprise a heterogeneity of radio access technologies with a common IP core. Support for terminal mobility and thus handover is a key feature of these networks. Handover occurs when a terminal changes its point of attachment from one access router to another. Communication is not possible during the change in point of attachment. To ensure service continuity it is necessary to keep this interruption as short as possible. This paper quantitatively evaluates the performance of a secure proxy mobility protocol (ProMPt) that supports fast mobility between heterogeneous access networks in one operator’s domain. ProMPt is designed by integrating access security and mobility support for optimal performance instead of layering protocols for these two purposes. To enable quantitative evaluation, a test bed was setup with realistic wireless link emulation and an implementation of a basic ProMPt state machine. Results show that ProMPt outperforms Mobile IPv6 combined with EAP-AKA by one order of magnitude thus providing better service when a terminal moves between different access routers.