An improved network layer protocol based on mobile IPv6

The mobile IPv6 proposed by the IETF aims at providing mobility support on the next generation Internet. First, the authors described the basic principle of mobile IPv6 in brief and analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of it, presented a new idea of allocating a specific address space for mobile node (MN) and developed a new extension header and two ICMP message types for mobile IPv6. Lastly the authors proposed an optimization strategy for mobile IPv6 based on these extensions of protocol, which has the following advantages: 1) It is more convenient to manage the MNs because MN can be judged from its IP address; 2) When the correspondent node (CN) is not actively communicating with a MN, the MN and its home agent (HA) need not send Binding Update to the CN, and the CN need not send Binding Request to the MN. Only when the CN really wants to send a packet to the MN, will the CN voluntarily send a MN Discovery Request message to acquire the MN’s care-of address. In this way, the transmission of Binding Update and Binding Request is greatly reduced, consequently the network overhead is also decreased; 3) While sending packets, the CN simply uses a MN Home Address Extension Header without using IPinIP encapsulation and routing header, which can reduce the redundant information in the packet and the message delay; 4) All the packets sent by the CN can be directly routed to the MN and the triangle routing can be completely avoided. By using these protocol extensions, the overhead of the network is greatly reduced and the network quality of services (QoS) is improved. Foundation item: The National Science Fund for Overseas Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 69928201); Foundation for University Key Teacher by the Ministry of Education and Changjiang Scholar Reward Project Biography of the first author: WANG Jian-xin, associate professor, doctor of engineering, born in 1969, majoring in routing algorithms, scheduling policies, and quality-of-service issues in Internet and wireless networks.