Locator ID Separation for Mobility Management in the New Generation Network

Given that the majority of communications devices are mobile terminals, efficient mobility support should be a key feature in the new generation network or future Internet. The current Internet does not have native mobility support. Although variants of Mobile IP protocols have been developed to address this problem, these protocols cause signaling overhead, create a single point of failure, and lack smooth handover capabilities and interoperability between IPv4 and IPv6. Recently, locator ID separation has been considered as a promising approach to better mobility support, while also improving security and routing scalability. In this paper, we present the mobility-related functions of the recently proposed locator ID separation-based network architectures. We also outline their limitations and list some possible extensions that will be needed if they are to be deployed in the new generation network.