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Learning Objectives
• Introduction to different phases of Mobile IP
• Understanding how a mobile node search the agents using Discovery
process
• Understand how care-of-addresses are acquired
• Understand the registration process in which a mobile registers its care-of-
addresses with Home Agent
• Understand techniques of Tunneling and encapsulation
1. Introduction
In the previous module we have introduced Mobile IP technology, its need in context with the
mobile ubiquitous scenario, the components entities and working of Mobile IP. We had learnt
that whenever the mobile node travels into a new network, it acquires a temporary address
which it informs to its home agent. Any packet for the mobile node is forwarded to the
temporary address by the Home Agent by encapsulating it in another packet. To support this
functioning, the first thing necessary is that the mobile node understands that it is in a foreign
network, search for the foreign agent and obtain COA. Then secondly the mobile node registers
COA with the Home agent. Then the mechanisms for tunneling and encapsulations follow. All
these activities are performed in three phases identified as: Discovery, Registration and
Tunneling. This module aims with deep understanding of these phases and the activities
underneath them.
2. Discovery
In this phase, the mobile node finds that it is in a foreign network and searches for a foreign
agent. This can be done in two ways by agent Advertisements and agent solicitation.
2.1 Agent Advertisement
Agent advertisements are used to discover the home and foreign agents while moving from one
network area to network. The process is similar as when the internet nodes detect routers by
ICMP router discovery protocol (RFC 1256). Therefore the same RFC 1256 is used for agent
discovery with the support of mobility by attaching special extensions to ICMP messages. The
Home Agent and Foreign Agent periodically send a router advertisement ICMP messages in the
form of beacon frames. In this way they show their willingness to act as Mobile IP routers.
When the mobile node receives the advertisement; it compares the network part of the agent’s
IP address with the network part of its own IP address (Home address). A mismatch in network
parts indicates that mobile node is in a foreign network. The foreign agent provides foreign-
agent care-of-address through agent advertisement which is the address of foreign agent itself.
Many nodes can share the same care-of-address which reduces demand of already scarce IPv4
addresses and also IPv6 addresses looking at the sprawl of mobile computing devices. It also
reduces bandwidth because foreign agent is end of the tunnel therefore messages from foreign
agent to mobile node are not encapsulated.
The following Extensions are applied to ICMP router Advertisement and are shown in Figure 1
Mobile-IP extension
1) Type = 16
2) Length = number of COA provided with the message. It is equal to 6+4*(no. of
addresses)
3) Registration lifetime = maximum lifetime specified by the agent in seconds which
the node can request during registration.
4) Sequence No. = total no. of advertisements sent during initialization.
5) The flags after registration lifetime explain the features of advertisement. They are
described as:
R-bit: registration with this agent is required even when the mobile node uses a co-
located COA.
B-bit: The Foreign agent is busy to take any registrations
H-bit: Agentis home agent
F-bit: Agent is foreign agent
M-bit: Minimal encapsulation is used for encapsulation
G-bit: Generic routing encapsulation is used
r-bit: was initially set to V in first version of mobile IP (RFC 2002) suggested use of
header compression and should be ignored.
T-bit: reverse tunneling.
The fields following the flags lists the COAs advertised.
The foreign agent should advertise at least one CoA. Home agents do not broadcast care-of-
addresses but they still broadcast mobility agent advertisements which the mobile node knows
when they return to their home network.
2.2 Agent Solicitation
The mobile node can also broadcast an agent solicitation based on RFC 1256 for router
solicitations. It will be answered by the foreign agent. A mobile node can search the foreign
agent using agent solicitation. To avoid flooding of the network, three solicitations are sent per
second as it enters a new network. This gap can be large for dynamic networks with moving
mobile nodes or the app’s which require continuous packet stream. If a node does not get reply
for agent solicitation, it decreases the rate of solicitations to avoid flooding of network.
If the mobile node moves to a network that has no foreign agents or all the agents are busy it
can acquire a temporary address through DHCP (RFC 2131) .The mobile node acts as its own
foreign agent and the address obtained as known as co-located care-of-address.
3. Registration
Once the care-of-address is achieved through the two steps describe as above the mobile node
registers it with its Home agent and informs about the current location where the packets
intended for it can be forwarded. The mobile node sends a registration request to the Home
Agent with its Care-of–address information. The Home Agent receives this request and accepts
or reject it andaccordingly sends a registration reply back to the mobile node. The process of
registration request depends on the location of COA.
Registration
Registration reply
reply
Duringthe registration process, the Home agent maintains mobile binding containing the Home
address, Care-of-address and registration lifetime. This is called binding of the mobile node.
Registration lifetime is negotiated during registration process and represents validity of
registration in seconds. It cannot be greater than provided with agent advertisement. The
registration is valid till that period and is automatically deleted after the lifetime expires. The
MN registers again before the binding period expires when it moves to another foreign network
or when it returns to the Home network. This prevents mobility bindings of the nodes which are
no longer used.
The registration can be unsuccessful if there are too many tunnels at HA and it cannot handle
more requests or when there is authentication failure or HA is not reachable to FA.
Case 2. If the mobile node uses co-located address it can directly send request to the Home
Agent (Figure 3)
MN Registration HA
request
Registration
reply
0 7 8 15 16 23 24 31
type 1 S B D M G R T x lifetime
home address
home agent
COA
Identification
extensions …
Figure 4: Registration request format
Registration message between mobile node and home agent should be authenticated to
prevent any malicious node to disrupt the traffic between mobile node and foreign agent using
bogus care-of-address. Using 128-bit secret key and HMAC-MD5 hashing algorithm, a digital
signature is generated. Each mobile node and home agent shares a common secret which
makes digital signature unique and allows the agent to authenticate the mobile node.
Registration Reply:
0 7 8 15 16 31
type = 3 code lifetime
Home address
Home agent
COA
Identification
extensions …
Figure 5: Registration reply format
· Type field =3
· Code = result of registration as specified in Table 1
· Lifetime= For how much time in seconds the registration will be valid in case it was
successful
4.1 Tunneling
After the registration process, the HA is informed of COA of the mobile node. When a packet
arrives at HA for the mobile node, it forwards it to its COA using a tunnel from HA IP address to
the COA. Tunneling means establishment of pipe and pipe is the data stream between two
connected ends. Data is inserted from one end and it’s retrieved as FIFO words from other end.
Tunneling is done using encapsulation.
4.2 Encapsulation
Encapsulation means putting a packet header and data as data of another packet.
Decapsulation means removing the packet out from the data part of that packet.The new
header is called outer header or tunnel header. The original header is called inner header.
There are different ways of performing encapsulation
4.2.1 IP-in-IP encapsulation: In this scheme the home agent adds a new IP header called
tunnel header. The new tunnel header uses HA address as source address and mobile node’s
COA as the tunnel destination address. The tunnel header use 4 as the protocol number
indicating that the next protocol header is again an IP header.
·
Encapsulated diagram
Sr Dest Proto
C M ? DATA
Home agent
Foreign agent
Mobile node
Figure 6: IP within IP Encapsulation
Version = 4 IHL DS (TOS) Total length
IP identification flags fragment offset
Outer Header
time to live Protocol = 4 Header checksum
IP address of HA (source)
Care-of-address of MN (Destination)
Version = 4 IHL DS (TOS) Total length
IP identification flags fragment offset
time to live Protocol = 4 Header checksum Inner Header
IP address of CN (source)
Home address of MN (Destination)
5. Conclusion
In this module, we have elaborately discussed the implementation of Mobile IP
technology in different phases. We had understood the methods for agent
discovery, registration process and how Home agent performs Tunneling and
encapsulation. It can be concluded that Mobile IP technology provides
uninterrupted connectivity to the devices moving from one network to another
network.