User agent migration policies in wireless networks

Wireless networks often employ network-based user agents as proxies for mobile users. In this paper, we consider the fundamental problem of designing migration policies for these user agents. We first introduce a general framework for analyzing user agent migration policies, and then highlight, through analysis and simulation, the numerous parameters and tradeoffs that dictate the design of migration policies. We evaluate these policies in the context of both homogeneous and heterogeneous networks, and in the presence and absence of processing overheads due to migration. Finally, we identify two simple threshold-based policies that deliver very good performance over a wide range of system parameters and configurations. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to propose and evaluate policies for migration of user agents.