QoS-Aware Remote Bindings in IP Based Mobility

Abstract

QoS and mobility is a field that still has some performance issues. QoS degrade when IP based nodes become mobile. This thesis tries to make IP based networks as good as cellular networks, when it comes to mobility.

We focus on solving the added complexity introduced by QoS in mobility management in the middleware layer, inside a remote binding.

The main problem states, that we should find out how a remote binding can adapt and enhance QoS-parameters that perform poorly in IP based mobility management.

The methods used are testing and prototyping. We test existing mobility management software (Mobile IP based) and design, implement and test a QoS-Aware Remote Binding, named MobiBind. A custom traffic generator, KGen, was developed as part of this thesis, in order to performe testing.

In the test of Mobile IP, we found that the QoS parameters; packet loss and seamlessness underperformed. We also found that hand-overs in IP based mobility takes about one second to complete.

MobiBind did manage to increase performance of both packet loss and seamlessness in mobility management. This did however increase the delay (round trip time).

We found that the main problem in mobility management is the hand-overs, and the connection breakage of about one second. This introduces QoS degeneration that in our Mobile IP tests showed up in the QoS parameters packet loss and seamlessness. MobiBind increased performance of these QoS parameters, at the cost of delay. This indicates that there is a tradeoff between the different QoS parameters, and that total QoS might be difficult to increase unless the underlying problem is fixed, in this case; the connection breakage. MobiBind enables application developers to control which QoS parameters mobility management impacts.