TABLE OF CONTENTS One of the earliest mobility management protocols proposed was a protocol called Mobile IP. Despite some drawbacks, Mobile IP has stood the test of time and is well established today. It is a standard feature included in routers and is deployed in cdma2000 networks.
We take postal mail delivery as an analogy. Most people have a home address that uniquely identifies a location, such as a residence or a post office box. When they move and obtain a new address in the new location, they would like their mail to reach them at the new location.
The problem addressed by Mobile IP is similar. Most machines on the Internet have an IP address that uniquely identifies a location, in the sense of a certain subnet region of the whole network. When machines move and obtain a new address in the new location, they would like IP packets addressed to them to reach them at the new location. We refer to such nodes that move as mobile hosts (MH). Note that Mobile IP is not specified only for wireless nodes, but can be used by nonwireless nodes too. For example, a laptop that is brought around to different locations could take advantage of the services provided by Mobile IP. Nevertheless, Mobile IP is most useful for wireless nodes.
We first continue the postal-mail analogy to provide an overview of the Mobile IP solution. We then revisit Mobile...
