Multiple mobile routers in NEMO: How Neighbor Discovery can assist default router selection

The Network Mobility Basic Support (NEMO BS) protocol is the IETF standard to manage the mobility of entire IPv6 networks. One of the typical applications of this protocol is to deploy NEMO BS in transportations such as train or bus. As a result, passengers can benefit from global and permanent IPv6 connectivity with legacy IPv6 terminals equipped with a common wireless technology such as Wi-Fi. However, a mobile network is generally managed by a single mobile router which carries out all operations related to mobility and packet forwarding. In this article, we present a new proposal which enables the cooperation of multiple mobile routers to improve the bandwidth, network coverage and reliability of a mobile network. In addition, a dynamic load sharing mechanism between all available mobile routers is supported. This solution mainly relies on Neighbor Discovery and has been experimented on a real testbed.