On the scalability of IP micro-mobility management protocols

This paper concentrates on the scalability aspects of mobility management, particularly mobility within an access network (´micro-mobility´). It is argued that the normal classification of mobility protocols as tunnel-based or per host forwarding solutions is not useful from a scalability viewpoint. Three aspects of scalability are identified: terminal, geographic and throughput. The paper argues that terminal scalability is not a major issue, given assumptions about address allocation, whilst geographical and throughput scalability require the support of arbitrary topologies, and multiple gateways to the access network. Four exemplar micro-mobility protocols are discussed.