Port-based Multihomed Mobile IPv6: Load-balancing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Abstract

With today's heterogeneous access to the Internet, users will move between wired and wireless environments and between infrastructure mode and ad hoc mode of wireless communication. When a mobile node moves from an infrastructure connection and connects multihop to an Internet gateway, the performance will degrade and it may not be able to send all of its traffic via a single gateway. This highlights the need of load-balancing between Internet gateways, especially since the behavior of users today involves a multitude of parallel activities generating multiple flows. This paper proposes a solution that enables distribution of individual traffic flows via different Internet gateways instead of using one single gateway. The proposal includes extensions to mobile IP in order to handle flow mobility bindings. The performance of the solution is verified by simulation studies.