Multicast Handoff Agent Mechanism for All-IP Mobile Network

This paper proposes a mechanism called a Multicast Handoff Agent (MHA) to reduce handoff latency for IP multicast. The MHA acts as a proxy for the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) of mobile nodes and keeps information for members of multicast groups in a cell. When a mobile node moves to other cell, the MHA immediately sends unsolicited reports without waiting for the IGMP query. In addition, our mechanism may conserve battery power since it does not need to reply to a query.The mechanism is evaluated through simulation and analysis and compared with the IGMPv2 for mobility and IGMP traffic. Simulation results show that handoff latency can be largely reduced and the IGMP control traffic can be eliminated on the wireless links during the duration of membership.