MPTCP solution for seamless local SIPTO mobility

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method to support seamless mobility for sessions carried by SIPTO connections. Session continuity has been considered an issue to be solved within 3GPP, as none of the solutions proposed for Mobile IP directly apply in the context of LTE. As in some cases, typically when SIPTO relies on using Local Gateways (LGW), it is necessary to change the IP address allocated to a User Equipment (UE), an active session may be interrupted. We propose an MPTCP based solution within the LTE architecture to maintain a single session, initially carried over a given SIPTO connection, and then carried over another SIPTO connection initiated due to the mobility of user equipment (UE). We identify how MPTCP operates over the LTE architecture, and estimate whether the corresponding delay is compatible with session continuity.