Abstract: | Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) has been proposed by the Internet engineering task force (IETF) to compensate for such problems as handover latency and signalling overhead when employing Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). HMIPv6 supports micro‐mobility within a domain and introduces a new entity, namely mobility anchor point (MAP) as a local home agent (HA). However, HMIPv6 has caused load concentration at a particular MAP and longer handover latency when an inter‐domain handover occurs. In order to solve such problems, this paper establishes a virtual domain (VD) of a higher layer MAP and proposes a MAP changing scheme. The MAP changing scheme enables complete handover by using binding‐update of the on‐link care of address (LCoA) only when inter‐domain handover occurs. In addition, the concentrated load of a particular MAP is distributed as well. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |