MSIP: A Protocol for Efficient Handoffs of Real Time Multimedia Sessions in Mobile Wireless Scenarios

Abstract

The support for IP mobility has become very important with the increasing growth of mobile applications. One of the key challenges for the deployment of such wireless Internet infrastructure is to efficiently manage user mobility. Mobility is handled by Mobile IP at the network layer and Session Initiation Protocol at the application layer. The main aim of these schemes is to provide seamless connectivity for ongoing communications and to keep the handoff latency delay as less as possible. The delay constraint becomes even more crucial for real-time application. These schemes have various drawbacks associated with them. The Mobile IP scheme has drawbacks like triangular routing, longer delays and the need for tunneling management. SIP solves the problems of triangular routing and tunneling, but it involves the time consuming process of obtaining a new IP address from the DHCP server after the handoff.