Layering architecture of the Internet Protocol provides independent processing for each layer by concealing state information from each layer. Application Program Interface (API) is based on the idea of layering model. However, the idea disturbs efficient processing of applications requiring adaptation to network environment, such as context-aware applications in mobile computing. To address this need, this paper proposes MIBsocket designed as an integrated control and management system for general network information. Any variable information related to network is shared between each applications and operating system. MIBsocket detects and informs changes in network resources to applications. MIBsocket functions such as Get, Set, and Trap used in the application adapts dynamically to any environments. MIBsocket provides portability and facility for applications: it only requires a few modification to the operating system and its API has the same programmable interfaces as usual API's. MIBsocket does not interfere the current layering architecture, but it achieves remarkable improvement on the current model. We have measured costs of MIBsocket, and applied MIBsocket to the application named interface switching system which enables a mobile host to connect to the Internet anytime by switching interface depending on network environment. As a result, the costs of MIBsocket was found acceptable. The application shows that MIBsocket is useful for movement detection and reconfiguration of network resources in the mobile computing.

In this paper, we discuss the performance of a basic scheme to support network mobility. Network mobility arises when an entire network segment, such as a network inside a vehicle, changes its topological location and thus its access point to the fixed backbone network. Mechanisms to support network mobility are necessary to maintain sessions. The approach followed by the IETF (NEMO Basic Support) and us (B-ORC) is to establish a bi-directional tunnel between the mobile network and the Internet. As we show, this bi-directional tunnel is a performance bottleneck and leads to single points of failure. In order to address the issues of the existing mobile network architecture, we propose enhanced operations of the basic mobile network protocol to achieve reliability and efficiency: (1) multiple bi-directional tunnels between the mobile network and the Internet, and (2) policy-based routing. The proposed operations could be realized by extending the existing architecture and protocol. The performance of various multihoming configurations is evaluated based on the implementation of our own basic scheme. The evaluation criteria are delay, throughput and latency. The results are encouraging and show we can achieve a better throughput.

Motivated by the deployment of post-disaster MANEMO (MANET for NEMO) composed of mobile routers and stations, we evaluate two candidate routing protocols through network simulation, theoretical performance analysis, and field experiments. The first protocol is the widely adopted Optimized Link State Routing protocol (OLSR) and the second is the combination of the Tree Discovery Protocol (TDP) with Network In Node Advertisement (NINA). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that these two protocols are compared in both theoretical and practical terms. We focus on the control overhead generated when mobile routers perform a handover. Our results confirm the correctness and operational robustness of both protocols. More interestingly, although in the general case OLSR leads to better results, TDP/NINA outperforms OLSR both in the case of sparse networks and in highly mobile networks, which correspond to the operation point of a large set of post-disaster scenarios.

Mobile IPv6 and Network Mobility (NEMO) have been standardized as IP extensions. While these technologies are planned to be adopted by several communities, such as the vehicle, aviation, and cellular industries, Mobile IPv6 has serious deployment issues such as scalability, protocol resilience, and redundancy. In these technologies, a special router called a home agent is introduced to support the movement of mobile nodes. This home agent introduces overlapping, inefficient routes, and becomes a single point of failure and a performance bottleneck. In this paper, a new concept for scalable and dependable mobility management scheme is proposed. Multiple home agents serve the same set of mobile nodes. The Home Agent Reliability protocol and Home Agent migration are introduced to achieve this concept. We also propose an overlay network named a Global Mobile eXchange (GMX) that efficiently handles data traffic from and to mobile nodes, and operates home agents as would an Internet eXchange Point (IXP).

Network Mobility (NEMO) Basic Support is the standard protocol to provide continuous network connectivity and movement transparency to a group of nodes moving together, as in a vehicle. However, the protocol suffers from sub-optimal routing and packet overhead caused by a bi-directional tunnel between the Mobile Router (MR) connecting the mobile network to the Internet and its Home Agent (HA). When a nested NEMO is formed, these inefficiencies become intolerable for real-time multimedia applications. To optimize the delivery of these packets, this study proposes Optimized NEMO (ONEMO) that is capable of providing an optimal path with minimum packet overhead in various scenarios with nested mobility. The protocol is designed to offer the path with minimum signaling overhead and functional requirements are limited to its MRs. Evaluation through measurements against NEMO Basic Support and comparison among other solutions showed effectiveness of the protocol.

On the Internet, two different IP protocols are deployed such as IPv4 and IPv6. The Mobile Router uses the basic NEMO protocol which is IPv6 protocol specific. During the early period of time that IPv6 transition is occurring it is very likely that a Mobile Router will move to an IPv4 only access network. When this occurs the Mobile Router will no longer be able to operate using the basic NEMO protocol. There has already been some earlier work to provide IPv6 capability over an IPv4 access network for a Mobile Router. This paper provides a capability by to maintain IPv6 connectivity for the Mobile Router via its Home Agent with IPv4-in-IPv6 encapsulation with no special boxes to be deployed elsewhere in the network.