Abstract
The architectural evolution from hierarchical to flatter networks creates new challenges such as single points of failure and bottlenecks, non-optimal routing paths, scalability problems, and long handover delays. The cellular networks have been hierarchical so that they are largely built on centralized functions based on which their handover mechanisms have been built. They need to be redesigned and/or carefully optimized. The mobility extension to Host Identity Protocol (HIP) proxy, mobile HIP Proxy (MHP), provides a seamless and secure handover for the Mobile Host in the hierarchical network. However, the MHP cannot ensure the same handover performance in flatter network because the MHP has also utilized the features offered by the hierarchical architecture. This paper extends the MHP to distributed mobile HIP proxy (DMHP). The performance evaluation of the DMHP in comparison to MHP and other similar mobility solutions demonstrates that DMHP does indeed perform well in the flatter networks. Moreover, the DMHP supports both efficient multi-homing and handover management for many mobile hosts at the same time to the same new point of attachment.