RAMS: A Protocol Extension to PMIPv6

for Improving Handover Performance of Multicast Traffic

 

Luis M. Contreras1, Carlos J. Bernardos1 and Ignacio Soto2

 

1Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Avda de la Universidad, 30

E-28911 Leganés, Spain

contreras.uc3m@gmail.com, cjbc@it.uc3m.es

 

2Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Madrid, Spain

isoto@dit.upm.es

 

 

Abstract

 

IP multicast allows the efficient support of group communication services. The increase in the

use of multicast has also triggered the need for supporting IP multicast in mobile environments.

It is necessary to consider current unicast mobility management solutions in IP-based networks to

smoothly extend multicast services to mobile users. Proxy Mobile IPv6 is a network-based mobility

management solution, where the functionality to support the terminal movement resides in the network.

Recently, a base solution has been adopted for supporting multicast in PMIPv6. Nevertheless,

this solution has not special features to optimize performance during handovers and this can cause

disruptions in the reception of multicast traffic by the mobile terminals. This paper proposes and

evaluates RAMS, an extension to the PMIPv6 protocol for accelerating the multicast service delivery

to mobile terminals after handovers. We explore the performance gain obtained by RAMS,

compared against the base solution, using two different radio access network scenarios: 3GPP UTRAN

and LTE.

 

Keywords: PMIPv6, mobile internet, IP multicast

 

Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA),

Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 67-82, June 2011 [pdf]