HON: a novel network architecture to Support QoS differentiation in vertical handovers

Achieving QoS support during vertical handovers across administrative domains is a challenging work because of two unique characteristics of the problem: (a) the lack of common root router, and (b) the lack of QoS guarantee on the bypass path between two administrative domains. Although various micromobility schemes are developed to support intra-domain mobility, mobile IP is still only workable solution for inter-domain mobility. To this end, this paper presents a novel handover overlay network (HON) architecture that not only supports predictable QoS during vertical handovers across different administrative domains, but also provides the capability to differentiate QoS handover classes. By differentiating the QoS support during the vertical handover, our framework improves the resource usage of the overlay network and gives better QoS guarantee to premium traffic. By integrating enhanced admission control algorithm, neighbor discovery algorithm at access routers, selective usage of Internet QoS mechanisms and advanced overlay adaptation algorithms, the framework provides a scalable and flexible structure to guarantee the end-to-end QoS during the vertical handover across administrative domains.