Wireless Communication and

Mobile Computing

By: Zigiju N.
January, 2023
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Chapter 6
Mobile Network Layer

Contents
 Mobile IP
 Introduction
 Mobile IP Entities and Terminologies
 IP Packet Delivery
 Registration
 Tunneling and Encapsulation
 Introduction to Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks
 Mobile Internet Protocol (or Mobile IP)
3  Mobile IP is a communication protocol (created by extending Internet
Protocol, IP) that allows the users to move from one network to another with
the same IP address.
 It ensures that the communication will continue without the user’s sessions
or connections being dropped.
 Cont…
4  Mobile IP solves the following problems:
if a node moves without changing its IP address it will be unable to
receive its packets,
if a node changes its IP address it will have to terminate and restart its
ongoing connections every time it moves to a new network area (new
network prefix).
 Mobile IP is a routing protocol with a very specific purpose.
 Mobile IP is a network layer solution to node mobility in the Internet.
 Mobile IP is not a complete solution to mobility, changes to the transport
protocols need to be made for a better solution (i.e., the transport layers are
unaware of the mobile node’s point of attachment and it might be useful if,
e.g., TCP knew that a wireless link was being used!).
 Mobile IP Entities and Terminologies

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 Cont…
6  Mobile Node (MN) is the hand-held communication device that the user
carries e.g. Cell phone.
 Home Network is a network to which the mobile node originally belongs as
per its assigned IP address (home address).
 Home Agent (HA) is a router in-home network to which the mobile node was
originally connected
 Home Address is the permanent IP address assigned to the mobile node
(within its home network).
 Foreign Network is the current network to which the mobile node is visiting
(away from its home network).
 Foreign Agent (FA) is a router in a foreign network to which the mobile node
is currently connected. The packets from the home agent are sent to the foreign
agent which delivers them to the mobile node.
 Cont…
7  Correspondent Node (CN) is a device on the internet communicating to the
mobile node.
 Care-of Address (COA) is the temporary address used by a mobile node
while it is moving away from its home network.
 Foreign agent COA, the COA could be located at the FA, i.e., the COA is an
IP address of the FA. The FA is the tunnel end-point and forwards packets to
the MN. Many MN using the FA can share this COA as a common COA.
 Co-located COA, the COA is co-located if the MN temporarily acquired an
additional IP address which acts as COA.
 This address is now topologically correct, and the tunnel endpoint is at the
MN.
 Co-located addresses can be acquired using services such as DHCP.
 IP packet delivery
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 CN wants to send an IP packet to the MN.

 Internet , not having info on the current location of MN, routes the packet to
the router(Home Agent) responsible for the home network of MN.
 HA now intercept the packet(to find current location)
 Not found in home n/w then encapsulated and tunneled to the COA.
 A new header put in front of the old header showing the (FA) COA as the
new destination.
 FA now decapsulates the packets (remove additional header)
 Last, MN sends the packets as usual with its own fixed IP address as source
and CN's address as the destination.
 Agent Discovery
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 One initial problem of MN after moving is how to find a foreign agent ?.
 Two types of methods:
Agent advertisement:
FA and HA advertise their presence periodically using special agent
advertisement message.
ICMP messages are used with some mobility extensions.
Agent solicitation:
No agent advertisement
Mobile node must send agent solicitations. Souled not flood the network
MN can send three solicitations msgs. , one per sec. , as soon as enter in
new network.
Discovery of new agent can be done anytime.
 Registration
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 It is used to inform the HA of the current location for correct forwarding of
packets.
 After receiving COA address the MN has to register with the HA.
 Registration can be done in two ways:-
 Registration of mobile node via the FA, and
 Directly with the HA
 Registration (COA is the FA)
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 If the COA is at the FA then,

 MN sends its registration request containing the COA to the FA
which then forward the request to the HA.
 Now HA will do the mobility binding containing the mobile node's
home IP address with the current COA.

–
 Registration (COA is co-located)
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 If the COA is co-located.

 MN sends its registration request containing
the COA to the FA which then forward the
request to the HA.
 Now HA will do the mobility binding
containing the mobile node's home IP
address with the current COA.
 Tunneling and Encapsulation
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 Tunneling is a mechanisms used for forwarding packets between the HA
and COA.
 A tunnel establishes a virtual pipe for data packets between a tunnel entry
and a tunnel endpoint.
 Packets entering a tunnel are forwarded inside the tunnel and leave the
tunnel unchanged.
 Tunneling, i.e., sending a packet through a tunnel, is achieved by using
encapsulation.
 Encapsulation is the mechanism of taking a packet consisting of packet
header and data and putting it into the data part of a new packet.
 The reverse operation, taking a packet out of the data part of another
packet, is called Decapsulation.
 Cont…
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Tunneling
15 Encapsulation Methods
IP-in-IP encapsulation
● Ver – IP protocol version no.
● IHL – internet header length
● TOS – type of services (copied from
inner header)
● Length – complete encapsulated
packet length.
● IP id. , flags , frag. offset – used
for fragments
● TTL -time to live
● IP-in-IP – upper layer protocol IP-in-IP encapsulation packet format
● IP checksum – error detection
16 Minimal Routing Encapsulation

● In IP-in-IP several fields re redundant

● Minimal encapsulation will remove these redundancy
● Type – 55
● If S bit is set , the original sender address of the CN is
included.
17 Generic Routing Encapsulation
● Minimal and IP-in-IP only works for IP while
generic routing also supports other
network layer protocols
● GRE header starts with several flags
● C – checksum is present
● R – offset and routing info present
● K – key field , used for the aunthentication
● S – sequence number present
● s – strict source source routing is used
● rsv. - is used to distinguishes GRE from IP-
in-IP and minimal encapsulation
● Protocol – the protocol of the packet
following the GRE.
 Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET)
18  Ad hoc network is a kind of Wireless Network which can be designed for
fulfilling particular purposes that is served by establishment of the whole set
up on the fly.
 Example types of an Ad hoc network are -
Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET)
Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET)
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)
 A MANET consists of a number of mobile devices that come together to form
a network as needed, without any existing internet infrastructure or other kind
of fixed stations support.
 A MANET can be defined as an autonomous system of nodes or MSs(also
serving as routers) connected by wireless links, the union of which forms a
communication network modeled in the form of an arbitrary communication
graph.
 Cont…
19  MANETs are basically peer-to-peer, multi-hop wireless networks in which
information packets are transmitted in a store and forward manner from a
source to an arbitrary destination, via intermediate nodes as given in the figure:
 Cont…
20  Mobile ad hoc network is a collection of independent mobile nodes that can
communicate to each other via radio waves.
 They are self-organized, self-configured, and self-controlled infrastructure-less
networks.
 This type of network can be set up or deployed anywhere and anytime because
it poses very simple infrastructure setup and no or minimal central
administration.
 These networks are mainly used by community users such as military,
researchers, business, students, and emergency services.
 Nodes are using Internet Protocol and IP addresses are assigned to each of the
nodes.
 Individual nodes discover dynamically which other nodes they can
communicate with.
 Cont…
21 Features / Characteristics of MANETs
Rapidly deployable, self-organized, self-configured, and self-controlled
infrastructure- less networks
Wireless links
Every computer or device (node) is a router as well as end host
Nodes are mobile, topology can be very dynamic
Nodes must be able to relay traffic since communicating nodes might be
out of range
Can be a standalone network or it can be connected to external
networks(Internet)
Radio communication – shared medium
 Cont…
22 Applications of MANETs
 Defense applications
 Crisis management applications
 Telemedicine
 Tele-geo-processing application
 Virtual Navigation
 Education via the internet
 Vehicular area network
 Etc
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