Supporting of QoS and Micro-Mobility in MPLS-based IPv6 Wireless Networks

MPLS has allowed us to add connectionoriented capabilities over Internet. In addition to this, by reading only the label rather than the entire IP packet, routers are able to achieve higher forwarding speeds. Supporting mobile users in MPLS-based wireless networks and its various derivatives is quite a new subject, still in the research stage. Several schemes to support mobility in MPLS (e.g. H-MPLS) have been proposed to further support better performance of mobile users. However, the Quality of Service (QoS) issue within the concept of MPLS and wireless networks has not been discussed. In our paper, we propose a new network architecture (QoSMPLS) that can support both QoS and mobility within the MPLS framework. A Gateway Router (GWR) is used as the edge node of local domain instead of the concept of Foreign Domain Agent (FDA). A Central Location Management Server (CLMS) is introduced to administer the location information of those roaming mobile users. This can free the responsibility of the Gateway Router to become a generic, connecting the outside networks to the local domain. Utilizing the Class of Service (CoS) field in the MPLS header, QoS can be supported with mobility. Multiple LSPs can be established for the same destination mobile host in order to accommodate applications with different QoS requirements. Our approach can deal with multiple flows destined to the same mobile host instead of one LSP for all.