Internet engineering task force (IETF) has proposed hierarchical mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) in order to reduce a frequent location registration of a mobile node in mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). All traffics toward a mobile node must be transmitted through a MAP in HMIPv6. This brings unnecessary packet latency because of the increased processing cost of packet at the MAP. At this point, the processing cost of packet at the MAP is influenced by the packet arrival rate for a mobile node, cell mobility rate and the number of mobile nodes in MAP domain. In this paper, we analyze the MAP's performance considering the above elements. For this, we compare total cost of HMIPv6 with total cost of MIPv6 as MAP's capability after we define Markov chain model for performance analysis. Also, we define network's total profit as total cost of MIPv6 minus total cost of HMIPv6. Then, we can find optimal capability of MAP such that total profit has maximum value. Also, we use the blocking probability by the MAP's capability as performance estimation element. As a conclusion, we can observe both HMIPv6's performance by the MAP's capability and optimal capability of the MAP, and blocking probability form a relationship of trade off between them.

Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) has been proposed to improve the performance capability of Mobile IPv6 at handover. In HMIPv6, local entities named Mobility Anchor Points (MAPs) are distributed throughout a network to localize the management of intra-domain mobility. In particular, multi-layered MAP has been proposed to improve performance. MAPs reduce the number of Binding Updates to the Home Agent and improve the communication quality at handover. These conventional methods that manage a multi-layered MAP cannot, however, select an appropriate MAP because they use the virtual mobility speed. As a result, they increase the signaling traffic in a multi-layered MAP. Moreover, they may cause the load to concentrate at a specific MAP. In this paper, we propose a location management method for Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 using the MN's mobile history. In this method, when a MN performs a handover, the Access Router calculates the area-covered rate of each upper MAP from the MN's mobile history and selects the MAP that best manages the MN in accordance with its rate. Thus, the proposed method reduces both the number of Binding Updates to the Home Agent and the signaling traffic because it reduces the frequency of changing the MAP. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method by simulation.