The IETF's NEMO working group [1] was set up to address issues related to network mobility, i.e. where entire IPv6 networks change their point of attachment to the core Internet infrastructure. An example where this occurs is in Personal Networks (PNs), which are distributed personal environments where people interact with a variety of devices not only in their close vicinity but potentially anywhere. PNs consist of communicating clusters, or networks, of personal devices. These devices can be shared with other people, and even infrastructure-based systems.
To ensure continuous connectivity, with a desirable Quality of Service (QoS), it is preferable for a mobile network to be connected via several interfaces, several access technologies and distinct access networks. If this scenario exists then the mobile network is said to be multihomed [2][3]. In NEMO terms, a mobile network is considered multihomed when either the mobile network is simultaneously connected to the supporting infrastructure via more than one Mobile Router (MR), or when an MR has more than one egress interface.
The benefits that multihoming has for mobile networks are:
• Fault-Tolerance/Redundancy, where connectivity is maintained even in the event of a failure to a primary connection.
• Load-Sharing, where the traffic load of the mobile network is simultaneously spread over several routes.
• Policy-Routing, where the route to the mobile network is decided upon by a user-defined metric, such as cost, efficiency, guaranteed quality, etc. This policy could be either statically or dynamically defined and initiated either by the MR, the mobile network\'s Home Agent (HA), or by a node within the mobile network itself.
The goal of this assignment is to investigate multihoming scenarios in the context of network mobility, and with respect to Quality of Service.
The assignment consists of the following tasks:
• Study of the concepts of personal networks, Mobile IPv6 and Network Mobility (NEMO)
• Review of the basic principles of multihoming for mobile networks
• Study and analysis of the reported work on multihoming for mobile networks
• Adaptation of selected techniques for multihoming and definition of new methods that are suitable for personal networks
• Implementation, validation and analysis of the proposed techniques (e.g. using NS-2 [4])
• Analysis and refinement of the implemented algorithms
• Writing a scientific report containing the results of this assignment.
References
[1] IETF\'s NEMO Working Group, http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/nemo-charter.html
[2] Thierry Ernst, and Julien Charbon, "Multihoming with NEMO Basic Support", http://www.nautilus6.org/doc/paper/nemo-ICMU-ernst0401.pdf
[3] Nautilus6 Project, http://www.nautilus6.org/index.html
[4] Mobiwan for NS-2.26, http://www.ti-wmc.nl/mobiwan2/
