Excerpts

Preface This book focuses primarily on the current Mobile IPv6 standard, which was finalized in 2003 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It also covers current proposed optimizations and applications. The aim of this book is to explain in detail the current Mobile IPv6 specification and, more importantly, the assumptions that led to its final design. These assumptions are extremely important to developers and researchers in the field of IPv6 mobility. The topic of IPv6 mobility management has gained a lot of momentum over the last decade, especially with the growth of the wireless industry and the more recent convergence between wireless telecommunication networks (supporting over 1.5 billion devices) and the Internet. Research on packet switching started back in the 1960s and continued through the 1980s, producing the Internet as we know it today. The predominant Internet Protocol (IP) supported on the Internet today is the IP version 4 (IPv4). When IPv4 was first designed, the Internet was not expected to grow as fast as it did or to be used for the vast and diverse number of applications used today. In 1992, the IAB (known then as the Internet Activities Board and now called the Internet Architecture Board) forecasted the expected shortage in IP addresses in the near future and the imminent need for a new version of IP. A Next Generation Directorate was formed in IETF to choose the new protocol. In 1994, the Next Generation Directorate made its decision. The new protocol was named IP version 6 (IPv6), since version number 5 was already taken by another experimental protocol. Mobile IPv6 provides mobility support for IPv6, allowing devices to move within the Internet topology while being reachable and maintaining ongoing connections. To understand Mobile IPv6 and the assumptions behind the final specification, IPv6 needs to be understood in some detail. In addition, the fundamental principles of Internet routing and naming services must be understood. In this regard, this book is self-contained; it starts by describing the Internet protocol suite, commonly called the TCP/IP protocol stack, then describes the core IPv6 specifications in detail before getting into the details of Mobile IPv6 and its optimizations. Finally, the use of IPv6 and Mobile IPv6 are presented in the context of a third-generation cellular system based on the third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards. Organization of This Book Mobility management is a very large area that impacts many parts of the Internet protocol stack. In order for you to gain the maximum benefit from this book, it has been divided into four parts. Part One includes Chapters 1 and 2 and provides the necessary background about IPv6 and the Internet. This information is essential for understanding the subsequent parts. Readers already familiar with the Internet specifications and the details of IPv6 may choose to quickly browse through this part and start reading the next. Part Two provides a detailed analysis of the Mobile IPv6 protocol, starting with an overview of the protocol's operation in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 introduces the topic of security on the Internet, describes the issues involved in securing communication between two machines, and presents the current state of the art in this area. The aim of this chapter is to help you understand the issues involved in securing Mobile IPv6 and the assumptions made in this part of the protocol design. Chapter 5 discusses in detail the security threats, requirements, and design of Mobile IPv6 security. Part Three is dedicated to providing a theoretical evaluation of the performance of Mobile IPv6 handovers. First, the impact of Mobile IPv6 handovers on the transport layer protocols (and consequently applications) is presented in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 presents several optimizations aimed at improving Mobile IPv6 performance. Chapter 8 discusses some of the ongoing and future work related to mobility management for IPv6. Some of these topics are not exclusive to IPv6 or Mobile IPv6; however, we chose to include topics related to IP mobility in general, as they were found to be within the scope and spirit of this book. Part Four focuses on deployment issues for IPv6 and Mobile IPv6. Chapter 9 presents some of the most important mechanisms designed to allow IPv6 to be deployed in an IPv4 Internet. Chapter 10 uses 3GPP networks as an example for a third-generation cellular network, provides an overview of its architecture, and illustrates how IPv6 can be deployed in that network. Target Readers This book is self-contained. You need not have a strong background in the Internet or IPv6; however, basic knowledge about the Internet is needed. All of the necessary background information is provided either in the first part or in the relevant chapters. However, readers with an engineering or computer science background will have a deeper understanding of the technical issues presented in this book. The book starts by explaining the fundamental principles of the Internet and gradually introduces more complex issues related to IPv6, mobility management, and wireless networks. Therefore, it is suited to a wide range of readers, including network practitioners, Internet developers, engineers studying the latest developments in the Internet and IPv6 mobility technologies or refreshing existing knowledge, final year undergraduate students of engineering or computer science disciplines, and postgraduate students of the same disciplines. This book is also suited to researchers in the area of mobility management, as it helps them understand the requirements and assumptions that led to the development of Mobile IPv6. Understanding these assumptions is one of the most important ingredients for a successful research program. Excerpted from Mobile IPv6: Mobility in a Wireless Internet by Hesham Soliman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.