Dynamic load balancing among multiple home agents for MIPv6

In MIPv6, the home agent (HA) is the key entity to ensure a mobile nodepsilas (MN) reachability. A single HA on the home link will become a performance bottleneck. In order to enhance service availability and improve system performance, it is necessary to configure multiple HAs on the home link and efficiently balance load among these HAs. This paper proposes a dynamic multiple HA load balancing mechanism based on active overload prevention (DHALAOP). The solution actively prevents HA from overloading in advance, rather than just passively transferring excess load among HAs as previous load balancing mechanisms do. A novel dynamic weight load evaluation algorithm is introduced to provide the basis for optimal load balancing decision. In addition, DHALAOP utilizes single HA mirror image and load slicing scheme to achieve the transparency of load balancing and eliminate unnecessary additional overhead. The theoretical analysis results show that DHALAOP can be more efficient in enhancing service availability and improving system performance as compared with the previous mechanisms. At the same time it introduces a lower signaling cost.