Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) was standardized to reduce the long handoff latency, packet loss and signaling overhead of MIPv6 protocol and to exempt the mobile node from any involvement in the handoff process. However, the basic PMIPv6 does not provide any buffering scheme for packets during MNs handoff. In addition, all the binding update messages are processed by a Local Mobility Anchor (LMA) which leads to increase the handoff latency. Previous works enhanced PMIPv6 performance by applying fast handoff mechanisms to reduce the packet loss during handoffs; however, the LMA is still involved during the location update operations. In this paper, we present a new fast handoff scheme based on a cluster-based architecture for the PMIPv6 named Fast handoff Clustered PMIPv6 (CFPMIPv6); it reduces both the handoff signaling and packet loss ratio. In the proposed scheme, the Mobility Access Gateways (MAGs) are grouped into clusters with a one distinguished Head MAG (HMAG) for each cluster. The main role of the HMAG is to carry out the intra-cluster handoff operations and provide fast and seamless handoff services. The proposed CFPMIPv6 is evaluated analytically and compared with the previous work including the basic PMIPv6, Fast PMIPv6 based on Multicast MAGs group (MFPMIPv6), and the Fast Handoff using Head MAG schemes (HFPMIPv6). The obtained numerical results show that the proposed CFPMIPv6 outperforms all the basic PMIPv6, MFPMIP6, and HFPMIPv6 schemes in terms of the handoff signaling cost.

This study proposes an integrated technology based on Proxy Mobile IPv6, which is a network-based protocol with mobility support, and a mobile content delivery network (CDN) that provides efficient content delivery management. The proposed architecture offers several benefits, such as the conservation of network resources because of reduced total traffic between hops and a reduced hop count.

Flow mobility is an emerging technology to support flexible network selection for an application flow and to spread concentrated load to less-overloaded Internet access. Network-based flow mobility (FMO) does not require a massive amount of software logic and system resources on the mobile node. Under this approach, there are two kinds of modes available: network-initiated and user-initiated. Network-initiated FMO decides the best access network suited for a specific flow, but the decisions depend on the operator's policy. Therefore, it has limitations in supporting the user's preference and private network selection. In the user-initiated mode, users can hand off specific flow so that information of both the current user's preference and the conditions of private network are reflected. User-initiated flow mobility method has not been what should be specified and how it can be supported with the protocol sequence for real deployment. This paper extends Internet Exchange Key v2 (IKEv2) and an Attach request message to support user-initiated FMO when a flow moves between 3G and Wi-Fi access. Through performance analysis, we confirm that user-initiated FMO is superior to network-initiated FMO in terms of signaling overhead and handover latency costs.

In this letter, we propose a novel binding scheme for network mobility support in PMIPv6 networks where new network-layer messages are suggested to solve the duplicate tunneling problem. Also our proposed scheme is designed to reduce handover latency and signaling overhead for network-based mobility management. To evaluate the performance of our method, we verify the operation of the proposed scheme with the network simulator, ns-2, and accomplished the simulation to show its superior performance. The simulation results show that our proposed scheme works more efficiently than the scheme defined by the IETF NETLMM WG in terms of packet loss, handover latency, and average packet throughput.

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) has been proposed in order to overcome the limitations of host-based mobility management in IPv6 networks. However, packet losses during doing handover are still a problem. To solve this issue, several schemes have been developed, and can be classified into two approaches: predictive and reactive handover. Both approaches commonly use bi-directional tunnel between mobile access gateways (MAGs). In predictive schemes especially, mobility support for a mobile node (MN) is triggered by simplified link signal strength. Thereafter, the MN sends handover notification to its serving MAG, and is then able to initiate packet forwarding. Therefore, if the MN moves toward an unexpected MAG that does not have any pre-established tunnel with the serving MAG, it may lead to packet losses. In this paper, we define this problem as Early Packet Forwarding (EPF). As a solution, we propose an enhanced PMIPv6 scheme using two-phase tunnel control based on the IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover (MIH).

Packet delivery in Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) relies on an anchor node called LMA. All packets sent by a source node reach a receiver node via LMA, even though the two nodes attach to the same MAG. In some scenarios, PMIPv6 results in high delivery latency and processing costs due to this unnecessary detour. To address this issue, several PMIPv6 route optimization schemes have been proposed. However, high signaling costs and excessive delays remain when handover is performed. For this reason, we propose an enhanced PMIPv6 route optimization (EPRO) scheme. In addition, we analyze the performance of the EPRO. Analytical results indicate that the EPRO outperforms previous schemes in terms of signaling overhead and handover latency.