Mobile IP Handoffs between General Packet Radio
Service (GPRS) And Wireless Lan (WLAN)
Arshad Ali
PAF Kiet
Karachi, Pakistan
Abstract
The system design and implementation of a
demonstrator prototype, of Mobile IP handoffs
between GPRS and WLAN System is describe
in this paper. Mobile IP requires public IP
address but most mobile operators not support
such IP address. Several concepts are
available to solve the problem of Network
Address Translation (NAT) and firewall. This
paper will also present the low-latency mobile
IP handoff scheme that can reduce the handoff
latency of infrastructure-mode wireless LANs
to less than 100ms, the fastest known handoff
performance for such network.
INTRODUCTION
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) have
been set up in different kinds of areas such as
airports, hotels and offices. These Hot Spots,
mostly based on the IEEE 802.11b standard
allow to achieve bandwidth up to 11 Mbit/s.
These wireless access points supports up to
5m/s slow movement. Mobile users not have
the WLAN access to the network between Hot
Spots. So the mobile user must stay until al
currently needed data has been received.
It is possible to link areas between WLAN
systems to the internet using the General
Packet Radio Service (GPRS) mobile network
system to support mobile users between Hot
Spots with mobile Internet access. GPRS
bandwidth up to 115 kbit/s. it is optimized for
data traffic and is packet oriented. It support
mobility as in GSM. By using Mobile Internet
Protocol Mobile users can roams between
GPRS system and WLan systems. This IP
extension provides mobile network access if
mobile users change their point of attachment.
Mobile keeps the current IP of mobile users as
if it roams between different wireless network.
The physical coverage of a IEEE 802.11b
wireless LAN is limited because of the
engineering constraint in the underlying radio
technology. One can deploy multiple WLAN
cells where each cell is associated with an
access point, to increase the coverage of a
WLAN.
As mobile nodes move in and out of these
overlapped segments, they can associate with
the corresponding access points according to
beacon signal strengths. In the wireless LAN
interface card the intelligence to measure
signal strength and switch among network
segment. WLAN adapters need to be
configure to run access to enable cellular-like
networking structure.
In mobile IP, there are home and foreign
agents running on the wired network. These
mobile agents (MAs) periodically broadcast
mobile IP advertisements on the wireless
LANs. Whenever a mobile node migrates
from one subnet to another (foreign) subnet, it
starts receiving mobile IP advertisements from
the corresponding foreign agent. The mobile
IP software running on the mobile node
intercepts these advertisements and sends a
registration request to the newly discovered
foreign agent. After due authentication an IP-
over-IP tunnel is established between the
home agent and the foreign agent. From this
point onwards, the home agent acts as a proxy
for the mobile node, intercepts all packets
intended for the mobile node and transmits
them over the tunnel.
PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
The mobile operators use the private IP
address for the internet access. They route the
data from private IP to public IP gateway to
access the internet because it is not possible
for the operators to route the outside of the
providers private networks, The private IP
address using by subscriber is more efficient
for the operator.NAT (Network Address
Translation) is use by the operators to make
the route possible. GPRS mobile networks
have more different problems regards to
Mobile IP Handoffs.
For the mobile IP based communication the
tunneling function is needed and due to the
NAT gateway its fail due to the user tunneling
function used by the Mobile IP. To detect the
movement of networks system a movement
detection requires by a Mobile IP. By
additional functions of Mobile IP it should be
consider by GPRS Network.
RELATED WORK
Pollini gives an overview of research on
handoff performance and control [2]. He also
discusses the trends in handoff research
specific to wireless telecommunication
networks before the advent of wireless IP
networks.
One of the prominent works is the handoff
scheme proposed by Seshan et al. [2] and
implemented as a part of the Daedalus project.
To reduce the delay of handoff and eliminate
the data loss scheme IP multicast and
buffering uses. By the information of signal
strength of the communication for handoff,
scheme is based on anticipating between the
base station and the mobile nodes.
MOBILE IP And Firewall
Several Mobile agents are in Mobile
Architecture namely HA (Home Agent), FA
(Foreign Agent), CA (Correspondent Node)
[3]. The traffic from a correspondent node
via the HA mobile node receive also manage
the data flow of the Mobile Node. In the
home network HA act as a normal router for
the Mobile Node the HA receive the Care of
Address from the FA if it moves to the
foreign network using tunneling function
HA rote the data from the CN via the FA.
The data flow using care-of-address tunnels
by HA. The two tunnels use by the Mobile
IP as Forward tunnel and Reverse tunnel, In
Forward tunnel the data traffic forward
towards the data Mobile Node, In Reverse
tunnel start at the care-of-address and ends
at the HA.
When a mobile node send data packets to a
correspondent node with a different source
address behind a firewall ingress filtering
support by firewall. The network address of
the mobile node is different from the source
address of the Home Network because of it
the correspondent node located in the
internet not possible to receive the data
packets.
SYSTEM ARCHETECTURE
The problem of NAT and firewall
functionalities a system architecture for
Mobile IP handoffs between GPRS and
WLAN system has to consider. A special
solution is describe in the system architecture
based on Mobile IP implementation and an
additional tunneling function implemented by
CIPE (Crypto IP Encapsulation). To establish
a direct connection from the Mobile Node to
the HA the CIPE tunnel is required to
establish. Via the FA all mobile IP related
packets can be exchanged between the Mobile
Node and the HA directly. An additional
tunnel connection does not support mobile IP
software. Therefore the Mobile Node consist
of MIP agent and a FA.
Through the NAT Gateway FA provides the
tunnel to the HA and GPRS network also
connected. while the GPRS connection is
not in use, tunnel uses keep-alive messages.
One interface of MIP is connected to the
wireless hot spot via the PCMCIA wireless
card and to get GPRS access MIP agent
connected FA. Mobile node receive the
Mobile IP advertisement from the Hot Spot
via the wireless connection if it nears to Hot
Spot and if it is not reachable Mobile Node
establish the Handoff from WLAN to GPRS
this system architecture is sufficient between
GPRS and WLAN handoffs. Without data
interruption and minimal data loss it will
provide a permanent internet connection.
There will be no problem if a fast straight
line movement between the GPRS and
WLAN vertical handover but the high data
loss will occur it the Mobile Nodes switches
frequently between different networks to
accommodate this Hysteresis has to be
define which will provide stable Mobile IP
Handoffs. It can be realized by an additional
script that maintains two different values, a
low watermark and high watermark. Which
signal strength is insufficient for data
transmission indicate by low watermark and
a sufficient signal strength indicate by the
high water mark.
Mobile Node Registration
With the Newly MA discovered mobile
node do not immediately register to avoid
adjacent wireless IP effect if the old agent’s
advertisement has not expired. In ad hoc
mode this policy is beneficial, handoff
latency will increase on the infrastructure
mode network. By the link layer handoff
itself will avoid the effect of handoff and by
caching MA advertisement can be reduce.
INTEGRATING LOW-LATENCY
HANDOFFWITH QOS
GUARANTEES
The QoS or Bandwidth may employee when a
time critical applications running on mobile
nodes. To avoid the delay of message
exchanged between caching agent the mobility
software and QoS mechanism need to
interoperate with each other. While the mobile
applications are roaming the same level of
QoS is available with the policies across
different subnets should be consistent with
each other.
By sending the rather registration request to
the well-known MAC Address it registers with
WRS (Wireless Rether Client) whenever a
mobile node mitigates to a new wireless
subnet.With the registration request
solicitation for the mobile IP advertisement is
piggybacked. The cached advertisement with
the rether registration reply WRS then
piggybacks. In order to expedite the mobile IP
processing the mobile IP registration and reply
messages as urgent messages treat by the QoS
mechanism. After registering with the new
WRS, the WRC reestablishes bandwidth
reservations for each of its active application.
CONCLUSION
In this paper using additional tunneling
functions the problem of NAT and firewall
system has been eliminated. And MIP
handoffs in instable area of WLAN coverage
has been solved by using hysterises. Further,
this scheme can interoperate with a link-layer
QoS mechanism for wireless networks to
provide bandwidth guarantees even while
roaming.
REFRENCES
[1]
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/freesrchabstra
ct.jsp?
arnumber=1088301&isnumber=23648&punumb
er=8154&k2dockey=1088301@ieeecnfs&query=
%28%28mobile+ip%29%29%3Cin
%3Emetadata&pos=9
[2]
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/freesrchabstra
ct.jsp?
arnumber=1295052&isnumber=28806&punumb
er=49&k2dockey=1295052@ieeejrns&query=
%28%28mobile+ip%29%29%3Cin
%3Emetadata&pos=12
[3]
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/freesrchabstra
ct.jsp?
arnumber=1207588&isnumber=27174&punumb
er=8574&k2dockey=1207588@ieeecnfs&query=
%28%28mobile+ip%29%29%3Cin
%3Emetadata&pos=18