G. Velev (Germany), T. Kawakami (Japan), and R. Hakenberg (Germany)
micro-mobility; MPLS-TE; L2,5 switching
The concept of all-IP networks for future mobile communication systems lead to the development of Mobile IP as a standard for management of user mobility between IP subnets. Since the most of the all-IP scenarios foresee that user’s point of attachment (POA) to the network is an IP-capable device (router), IP mobility procedures are needed at each handover between POAs. To meet the requirements of fast IP (i.e. L3) mobility, extensions to Mobile IP have been developed in order to improve the handover latency and packet loss in micro mobility environment. On the other hand, there are research activities focused on the data-link layer (L2) mobility, e.g. projects within IEEE802.11 working group. In this paper we consider network architecture deploying MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) as tunnelling technology providing L2 mobility and traffic management in large L2 broadband mobile access networks. The L2 mobility is provided by the utilization of point-to multipoint (P2MP) Label Switched Path (LSP). Compared to L3 micro-mobility mechanisms, our solution shows comparable handover latency, but guaranteed QoS, improved connection reliability, as well as capability for soft handover.
Important Links:
Go Back
