Adama Science and Technology University

School of Electrical Engineering and Computing

Department of CSE

Wireless Mobile Networks

(CSE5309-Major Elective Course)

Chapter 7: Mobile IP
 Motivation for Mobile IP
▪ Any access to the Internet has a restriction of point of attachment.
▪ When a mobile node moves to a different place,
▪ we have to reconfigure it with a new IP address
▪ all active connections are interrupted
▪ packets which are routed to it will arrive at its original network
▪ Previously IP was not designed by considering mobility.
▪ When a mobile node moves to another physical location, it has to change its IP address.
▪ However, higher level protocols require an IP address of a node to be fixed----for identifying the
connections.

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 Motivation for Mobile IP…
• To support mobile communication two possible options
[apart from Mobile IP]
I. the node has to change its IP address whenever it changes its point of
attachment
II. host-specific routes have to propagate throughout Internet routing tables
• A better solution
– Mobile IP

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 Introduction to Mobile IP
▪ Due to , the dynamic nature of mobile nodes connectivity require more flexible support than
provided by conventional TCP/IP
▪ As a result, Mobile Internet Protocol [ Mobile IP ]
▪ Proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
▪ It enables mobile ,computers to stay connected to the Internet regardless of their location
and without changing their IP address.
▪ Mobile IP : It is an open standard that allows users to keep the same IP address, stay
connected, and maintain ongoing applications while roaming across different networks.
▪ It is a standard that allows users to move from one network to another without loosing
connectivity.

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 Cont’d…

▪ Mobile IP solves connectivity problem in mobility by allowing the mobile node to use two IP
addresses:
▪ A fixed home address and
▪ A care-of address that changes at each new point of attachment.
▪ The mobile node's home address always identifies the mobile node, regardless of its current point
of attachment to the Internet or an organization's network.
▪ Mobile IP enables a computer to roam freely on the Internet or an organization's network while still
maintaining the same home address.
▪ Consequently, computing activities are not disrupted when the user changes the computer's point
of attachment to the Internet or an organization's network.

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Layer Model
Application layer – service location
– new applications, multimedia
– adaptive applications
Transport layer – congestion and flow control
– quality of service
– addressing, routing,
Network layer device location
– hand-over
– Authentication -encryption
Data link layer – media access
– multiplexing
– media access control
– modulation
– interference
Physical layer
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– attenuation
– frequency
 Mobile IP Functional Entities

Mobile IP is consists of the following 5 entities

1. Mobile Node (MN)

▪ The entity that may change its point of attachment from network to network in the Internet.
▪ Assigned a permanent IP called its home address to which other hosts send packets regardless of
MN’s location.
▪ Since this IP doesn’t change it can be used by long-lived applications as MN’s location changes.

2. Home Agent (HA)

▪ Stores information about mobile nodes whose permanent home address is in the home agent's
network.
▪ Does mobility binding of MN’s IP with its CoA(Care of Address).
▪ Forwards packets to appropriate network when MN is away.

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 3. Foreign Agent (FA)
▪ If Mobile Node (MN) is away from Home Agent (HA) then it uses an Foreign Agent (FA) to send/receive data
to/from Home Agent (HA).
▪ A router on a mobile node’s visited network which cooperates with the home agent to complete the delivery
of packet to the mobile node while it is away from home.

4. Care-of-address (CoA)
▪ An address the mobile node uses for communication when it is away from its original network.
▪ Address which identifies Mobile Node’s (MN’s) current location.
▪ It is temporary IP address for a mobile device.
▪ This allows a home agent to forward messages to the mobile device

5. Correspondent Node ( CN )
▪ This node sends the packets which are addressed to the mobile node.

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 Illustration

Home Agent
Mobile Node

router

home network Foreign Agent

Internet

foreign
network
router
(current physical network
for the MN)

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end-system router
 Mobile IP Process

The Mobile IP process has three (3) main phases:

1. Agent Discovery
2. Registration Phase
3. Tunneling
1. Agent Discovery
❖ A mobile node discovers its foreign agents and home agents during agent discovery.
❖ Mobility agents advertise their presence by periodically broadcasting Agent Advertisement Messages(list Care-of-
addresses, flag)
❖ MN can trigger the advertisement by sending Agent Solicitation Message
❖ If the MN discovers that it is on foreign network, it obtains a care-of address
❖ Two methods

1. Foreign agent care-of address( shared by MN, by foreign agent)

2. Collocated care-of address( Foreign agents busy; by DHCP; one MN

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 Mobile IP process Cont’d…

2. Registration
▪ The registration process in Mobile IP with care-of addresses
Home Address Home Agent Media Lifetime
Address Address (in s)
131.193.44.14 131.193.44.7 00-60-08-95-66-E1 150
131.193.33.19 131.193.33.1 00-60-08-68-A2-56 200

Home Care-of Address Lifetime

Address (in s)
131.193.44.14 128.172.23.78 150
131.193.33.19 119.123.56.78 200

▪ Registration-The mobile node registers its current location with the foreign agent and home agent
11 during registration.
 Mobile IP process Cont’d…

3. Tunneling
A reciprocal tunnel is set up by the home agent to the care-of address (current location of the mobile
node on the foreign network) to route packets to the mobile node as it roams.

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 IP version 4 (IPv4)

❖ Internet Protocol version 4(IPv4) is the fourth version in the development of the Internet Protocol (IP)
Internet, and routes most traffic on the Internet.
❖ IPv4 uses 32-bit (four-byte) addresses, which limits the address space to 4294967296 (232) addresses.
❖ This limitation of IPv4 stimulated the development of IPv6 in the 1990s, which has been in commercial
deployment since 2006.
❖ IPv4 reserves special address blocks for
❖ Private networks (~18 million addresses) and
❖ Multicast addresses (~270 million addresses).
❖ Several market forces accelerated IPv4 address exhaustion:
❖ Rapidly growing number of Internet users
❖ Always -on devices—ADSL modems, cable modems
❖ Mobile devices—laptop computers, PDAs, mobile phones

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 Problems with basic Mobile IP
• Problems with the basic Mobile IP
– Security
– Ingress Filtering
– Triangular Routing
– Single Home Agent Model

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 Security
• Mobile nodes are connected to Internet
– via wireless
• vulnerable to security attack
– Example :
A node may pretend to be a FA and send a registration request
to a HA so as to divert Packet traffic to itself.
– Solution :
Authentication
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 Ingress Filtering
▪ router on some networks discards packets
if Source IP dose not belong to the network
• used to stop spoofing.

• packets sent from a MN include its home address as the source IP address

▪ Solution :
Reverse Tunneling
 Create a reverse path through the HA for the entire MN to CN
communications.

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 Triangular Routing

• Solution:
– Route Optimization
▪ Let the CN know the Care-of address of MN
17 ▪ Direct routing
 Single Home Agent

▪ Simple and easy to configure

• if the home agent breaks down
– Solution :
• Multiple home agent
 if one fail the other could take over

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 Mobile IPv6
▪ Solves the problem of the lack of available address space has come up with the
following improvements
• Route Optimization is built as a part of Mobile IPv6
• Foreign Agents are not needed(enhanced capability)
• Solves Ingress filtering problems in basic Mobile IP
• by putting the care-of address as the source address
▪ Mobile IPv6 provides mobility support for IPv6.
▪ It allows you to keep the same internet address all over the world.
▪ It allows mobility across homogenous and heterogeneous media.
▪ Foreign Agents are not needed in Mobile IPv6
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 Mobile IPv6…

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 Correspondent Registration

❖ Correspondent Node A correspondent node is a mobile or stationary peer communicating with a

mobile node.
❖ When a Mobile Node wants to send packets to the Correspondent Node for the first time, it has
to determine whether it can communicate with the Correspondent Node directly, using route
optimization, or indirectly, using bidirectional tunneling.

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 Bidirectional Tunneling
❖ When a Correspondent Node wants to communicate with the Mobile Node indirectly.
❖ CN sends the data packets to the MN’s Home address, which the home agent intercepts
and tunnels them using IPv6-over-IPv6 tunneling to the CoA of the MN
❖ The packet sent from the CN to the MN’s HoA consists of:
❖ IPv6 header
❖ Upper layer Protocol
❖ Data Unit (PDU)

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23 1/2/2024
 Cont’d…
❖ The packet intercepted by the HA and tunneled to the MN consists of:
❖ Outer IPv6 header.
❖ Inner IPv6 header.
❖ Upper layer PDU.

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 CDPD vs Mobile IP
CDPD:
❖ Complete lower layer solution for mobility
❖ Limited scalability to support more than seven carriers
❖ Lack of hooks to accommodate comprehensive security and authentication protocols (air
link secure, but backbone is not!)
❖ CDPD doesn't allows MH to be registered with multiple FAs,
Mobile IP:
❖ Can accommodate robust set of security protocols (end-to-end security is possible)
❖ Can scale to handle mobility across many routing domains–Failure of the AA to participate actively in
registration process
❖ No well defined wireless link
❖ No network management functions defined
❖ Mobile IP allows MH to be registered with multiple FAs;
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Cont’d….
Mobile
Host

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Summary

▪ Mobile IP allows MN to roam transparently from place to place within the Internet,
▪ Operations
▪ Agent Discovery, Registration, tunneling
▪ Problems with basic Mobile IP:
▪ Security , Ingress filtering , Triangular routing
▪ Mobility support in IPv6 solves many of the problems of basic Mobile IP.
▪ IPv6 has more addresses than IPv4, so NAT is not required.
▪ Mobile IPv6 is Lightweight protocol.
 of Chapter Sev
nd e

n
Thank You for Your
Attention

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