Home agent placement and IP address management for integrating WLANs with cellular networks

  • Authors:
  • Behcet Sarikaya

  • Affiliations:
  • Huawei Technol., Plano, TX

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Wireless Communications
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Seamless roaming between cellular networks (3G or upcoming 4G) and wireless local area networks can be provided using Mobile IP. However, GPRS/UMTS and 802.11-based WLAN networks have no native support for mobile IP. Mobile IP requires the deployment of home agents and a protocol between the mobile nodes, home agent, and corresponding nodes. We address the home agent placement and home address assignment issues for supporting mobile IP for heterogeneous roaming. Placement techniques for mobile IP home agents are presented including dynamic HA assignment in either WLAN or cellular network domains using the diameter mobile IP application. Next, we present several IPv4 home address assignment schemes for mobile nodes visiting in the WLAN domain such as NAT/NAPT traversal, reverse tunneling, and mobile VPNs. It is shown that HA placement and address management are orthogonal, and any combination is possible. Various architectures for both issues are evaluated against the optimal solutions