Secure handover for Proxy Mobile IPv6 in next-generation communications: scenarios and performance

As wireless mobile network technologies have grown tremendously over the past few years, security issues of protecting user privacy and network resources have emerged. Particularly, a mobile node (MN) must be authenticated in order to utilize the network resources whenever the MN performs its initial access or handover. In this paper, we present secure handover scenarios for Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6): namely, handover re‐authentication (HORA)and handover early‐authentication (HOEA). The presented secure handover scenarios are based on EAP that is a common authentication framework for wireless mobile networks. Analysis results for the total handover latency and packet loss are presented to demonstrate whether the presented secure handover scenarios satisfy with real‐time applications. PMIPv6 is in the early stage of deployment in various wireless mobile networks. The conducted results in this paper thus offer the key to an understanding of feasibility of PMIPv6 in the coming next‐generation network environments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In this paper, we present secure handover scenarios based on EAP in Proxy Mobile IPv6. First, three logical steps (L2 handover, authentication, and L3 handover) are deeply analyzed. Then, the current IETF activities for reducing the latency of EAP‐based authentication are presented and applied into Proxy Mobile IPv6. Finally, the applied secure handover scenarios are evaluated by the conducted analytical model. The presented numerical results corroborate that the presented secure handover scenarios provide acceptable performance for real‐time applications in terms of total handover latency and packet loss. Proxy Mobile IPv6 that has been recently standardized as a network‐based mobility support protocol is in the early stage of deployment in various wireless mobile networks. The conducted results in this paper thus offer the key to an understanding of feasibility of Proxy Mobile IPv6 in the coming next‐generation network environments.