Cross-Layer Routing Method for the SCTP with Multihoming MIPv6

The

multihoming

is regarded as a kind of technology to provide wide-band and relaible network service. The protocol called

Stream Control Transmission Protocol

(

SCTP

) [1] can manage the multi-homed nodes to realize a highly-available data transfer capability in the

Transport Layer

. An

SCTP

node may keep a combination of the sets of the eligible source and destination transport addresses. The node can detect if a transport address is out of service by periodical messaging which is called

HEARTBEAT

in

SCTP

. If the

HEARTBEAT

is unacknowledged, the node will change to send data via another transport address which is with a

HEARTBEAT ACK

. The multi-homed mobility nodes, such as the cellphones implemented with both WiFi and 3G, are widely used in the world.

Mobility Support in IPv6

(

Mobile IPv6, MIPv6

) [2] is a protocol to provide a mobility function in IP layer. However the

SCTP

is not a protocol designed for the moving nodes, such as the nodes using the

Mobile IP

(

MIP

). Also there is an enhanced

SCTP

called

mSCTP

[3] which enables the mobility at the

Transport Layer

. But the

mSCTP

is not designed for the multihoming

Mobile IP

. In this paper, we suggest a new cross-layer routing method to use the

SCTP

with the multihoming

MIPv6

. Our proposal is mobile node can use

SCTP

to select an optimized transport peer in real time.