A location management method using network hierarchies

Recent advances in network and computer technologies have led to the development of the mobile computing environment. In this environment, the location management is one of the most important issues. In this paper, for reducing the traffic volume of the location management, we propose a hierarchical location management method. This method divides a network into multiple groups (areas) where each area has at least one router. The locations of mobile hosts in an area are managed within the area, independently from those in other areas. Furthermore, the most suitable location management method for an area is used in this area. We also show results of simulation experiments for verifying the efficiency of the method. These results show that our proposed method can reduce the traffic volume of the location management