Design and Simulation of a Flow Mobility Scheme Based on Proxy Mobile IPv6

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) is a network-based mobility support protocol and it does not require Mobile Nodes (MNs) to be involved in the mobility support signaling. In the case when multiple interfaces are active in an MN simultaneously, each data flow can be dynamically allocated to and redirected between different access networks to adapt to the dynamically changing network status and to balance the workload. Such a flow redistribution control is called “flow mobility”. In the existing PMIPv6-based flow mobility support, although the MN's logical interface can solve the well-known problems of flow mobility in a heterogeneous network, some missing procedures, such as an MN-derived flow handover, make PMIPv6-based flow mobility incomplete. In this paper, an enhanced flow mobility support is proposed for actualizing the flow mobility support in PMIPv6. The proposed scheme is also based on the MN's logical interface, which hides the physical interfaces from the network layer and above. As new functional modules, the flow interface manager is placed at the MN's logical interface and the flow binding manager in the Local Mobility Anchor (LMA) is paired with the MN's flow interface manager. They manage the flow bindings, and select the proper access technology to send packets. In this paper, we provide the complete flow mobility procedures which begin with the following three different triggering cases: the MN's new connection/disconnection, the LMA's decision, and the MN's request. Simulation using the ns-3 network simulator is performed to verify the proposed procedures and we show the network throughput variation caused by the network offload using the proposed procedures. Keywords—Flow Mobility, Proxy Mobile IPv6