Analytical model for Binding Refresh Request to reduce storage and communication overhead in MIPv6 network

SUMMARY Home agent is a key component of MIPv6 functionality that comprises binding cache to hold the mobile nodes current point of attachment to the Internet. This paper is concerned with binding cache support for home agents within MIPv6 network. Existing binding cache of home agent supports weak cache consistency by using fixed contract length for Binding Refresh Request, which functions reasonably well in normal situations. However, maintaining a strong binding cache consistency in home agent as a crucial exceptional handling mechanism has become more demanding for the following objectives: (i) to adapt increasingly frequent change of care‐of address due to mobile nodes movement detection update; (ii) to provide fine‐grain controls to balance the binding cache load distributions for better delivery services; and (iii) to reduce the overhead allowances around the binding cache. In this paper, we have first verified the effectiveness of Binding Refresh Request contract length, and on the basis of that, two dynamic contract algorithms are suggested to reduce the storage and communication overhead allowances in binding cache. We have also compared our technique with the existing fixed Binding Refresh Request contract length, and our simulation results reveals that the proposed approach provides an effective performance to reduce overhead within the network. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Binding Refresh Request (BRR) is important to maintain binding association between mobile node (MN) and home agent (HA). Time interval between two BRR from HA to MN for a binding determines the contract length. In the proposed approach, dynamic BRR contract length is established for each and every MN record of binding cache to reduce storage and communication overhead in MIPv6 network.