Scheme to Prevent Packet Loss during PMIPv6 Handover

Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) is a presentative protocol which supports global IP mobility. MIPv6 causes a long handover latency that a mobile node (MN) cannot send or receive packets. This latency can be reduced by using Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6). PMIPv6 is a protocol which supports IP mobility without participation of the MN, and is studied in Network-based Localized Mobility Management (NETLMM) working group of IETF. There is much packet loss during handover in PMIPv6, although PMIPv6 reduces handover latency. In this paper, to reduce packet loss in PMIPv6 we propose Packet Lossless PMIPv6 (PL-PMIPv6) with authentication. In PL-PMIPv6 a previous mobile access gateway (pMAG) registers to a Local Mobility Anchor (LMA) on behalf of a new MAG (nMAG) during layer 2 handoff. Then, the nMAG buffers packets during handover after registration. Therefore, PL-PMIPv6 can reduce packet loss in MIPv6 and PMIPv6. Also, we use Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) infrastructure to authenticate the MN and to receive MN’s profiles securely. For the comparison with MIPv6 and PMIPv6, detailed performance evaluation is performed. From the evaluation results, we show that PL-PMIPv6 can achieve low handover latency and low total cost.