Multiple Virtual Interfaces for Multi-homing Hosts to Support Inter-technology Handover in PMIPv6 Network

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), a network-based mobility management protocol, supports multi-homing, inter-technology handover, and flow mobility, with the help of a host’s virtual interface (VI). Several single virtual interface (SVI) schemes have been proposed to support these functions. In the SVI schemes, the link-layer identifier (LL-ID) should be swapped while the host is processing neighbor discovery (ND) after inter-technology handover or flow mobility. That is, a host must replace the LL-ID of a VI contained in a neighbor advertisement with the LL-ID of a physical interface (PI) related to a real connection. Such LL-ID swapping cannot be executed under secure neighbor discovery, and it causes ND processing delay and high overhead to check all outgoing packets. In this paper, we propose a multiple virtual interfaces scheme to solve the problem related to the LL-ID swapping, and to provide good support to the inter-technology handover. In the proposed scheme, there are the same numbers of VIs as the PIs between the data link layer and the network layer of a host. Since each VI maintains its own neighbor cache, the proposed scheme does not require LL-ID swapping, so that it can keep the standard ND process. We explain the basic operation of PMIPv6 inter-technology handover under the proposed scheme and, through NS-3 simulation, evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of ND process delay and inter-technology handover latency.