CAPWAP Handover Protocol

CAPWAPHP is a new handover and context transfer protocol for WLAN hosts managed by an access controller. The handover protocol is designed to ensure that the station has an association with a single wireless termination point and when the station does a handover to another wireless termination point, ensure that forwarding tables of the switches are updated. The context transfer protocol is designed as an original application of IETF´s context transfer protocol using neighbor graphs. Station authentication context which is established at the association time gets transferred to neighboring wireless termination points and as a result, in subsequent reassociations the authentication time can be reduced. For Split MAC wireless termination points the context is stored at the access controller. Soft-state Markov chain analysis results indicate that context hit rates increase with average residence times under a wireless termination point and simulation results indicate that much shorter handover latencies result compared with full authentication without context transfer.