Signaling Load of Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 Protocol in IPv6 Networks

Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) has been proposed to accommodate frequent mobility of the mobile nodes and reduce the signaling load in the Internet. Though it is being considered as an efficient local mobility management protocol, its performance may vary widely depending on the various mobility and traffic related parameters. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the effects of these parameters and conduct in-depth performance study of HMIPv6. For the analysis of HMIPv6, we present a new analytical method using the mobility model based on imbedded Markov chain and a simplistic hierarchical network model. Based on these models, we analytically derive the location update cost (i.e.,binding update cost plus binding renewal cost), packet tunnelling cost, and total signaling cost, respectively, in HMIPv6. In addition, we investigate the effects of various parameters such as the speed of a mobile node, binding lifetime, and packet arrival rate on the total signaling cost generated by a mobile node during its average MAP domain residence time. The analytical results demonstrate that the signaling load generated by HMIPv6 decreases as the speed of a mobile node and binding lifetime get larger, and its packet arrival rate gets smaller.