Chapter Seven

Mobile Internet

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• Some part of these slides is taken from a slide by
– Chittaranjan Hota (PhD)
– Dr. Xiaoming Fu & Prof. Dr. Dieter Hogrefe

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• Outline
– Mobility Approaches
– Mobile IP

3
 Introduction
• People need to access the Internet while:
– Driving
– Commuting
– Walking
– Etc.

4
 What is mobility?
• spectrum of mobility, from the network perspective:

No mobility Moderate mobility High mobility

mobile user, connecting/ mobile user, passing through

mobile wireless user, disconnecting from network multiple access point while
using same access using DHCP. maintaining ongoing connections
point (like cell phone)

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 Introduction
• Portable Networking (Nomadic Networking) - user's
Internet connection is terminated each time the user
moves and a new connection is initiated when the user
dials back in
• Technologies
– Bluetooth
• Short range, low cost radio links between mobile devices
– Wireless Ethernet (802.11)
• MAC Layer technology

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 Introduction
• Mobile Networking
– Computing activities are not disrupted when the user
changes the computer’s point of attachment to the
Internet
– All the needed reconnection occurs automatically and
non-interactively
• Technical obstacles
– Internet Protocol (IP) routing scheme
– Security concerns

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 Mobility: Terminologies

home network: permanent home agent: entity that will

“home” of mobile perform mobility functions on
(e.g., 128.119.40/24)
behalf of mobile, when mobile is
remote

wide area
network
Permanent address:
address in home network,
can always be used to
reach mobile
e.g., 128.119.40.186 correspondent
 Mobility: Terminologies

visited network: network in

Permanent address: remains which mobile currently resides
(e.g., 79.129.13/24)
constant (e.g., 128.119.40.186)
Care-of-address: address in
visited network.
(e.g., 79,129.13.2)

wide area
network

Foreign agent: entity in

visited network that
performs mobility
correspondent: wants to functions on behalf of
communicate with mobile.
mobile
 Mobility: Approaches
• Let routing handle it: routers advertise permanent
address of mobile-nodes-in-residence via usual routing
table exchange
– Routing tables indicate where each mobile is located
– No changes to end-systems
• Let end-systems handle it:
– Indirect routing: communication from correspondent to
mobile node goes through the home agent
– Direct routing: correspondent gets foreign address of
mobile, sends directly to mobile node

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 Mobility: approaches
• Let routing handle it: routers advertise permanent
address of mobile-nodes-in-residence via usual routing
not
table exchange scalable
to millions of
– Routing tables indicate where each mobile located
mobiles
– No changes to end-systems
• Let end-systems handle it:
– Indirect routing: communication from
correspondent to mobile goes through home agent
– Direct routing: correspondent gets foreign address
of mobile, sends directly to mobile node

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 Mobility: registration

visited network
home network

1
2
wide area
network

mobile contacts
foreign agent contacts home agent foreign agent on
home: “this mobile is resident in my entering visited
network” network

End result:
• Foreign agent knows about mobile
• Home agent knows location of mobile
 Mobility via Indirect Routing

foreign agent receives

packets, forwards to
home agent intercepts mobile
packets, forwards to foreign visited
agent network
home
network
3
wide area
network
2
1
correspondent addresses 4
packets using home
mobile replies
address of mobile
directly to
correspondent
 Indirect Routing: comments
• Mobile uses two addresses:
– permanent address: used by correspondent (hence mobile
location is transparent to correspondent)
– care-of-address: used by home agent to forward datagrams
to mobile
• foreign agent functions may be done by mobile itself
• triangle routing: correspondent-home-network-
mobile
– inefficient when
correspondent, mobile
are in same network
 Indirect Routing: moving between networks
• suppose mobile user moves to another
network
– registers with new foreign agent
– new foreign agent registers with home agent
– home agent update care-of-address for mobile
– packets continue to be forwarded to mobile (but
with new care-of-address)
• mobility, changing foreign networks
transparent: ongoing connections can be
maintained!
 Mobility via Direct Routing

foreign agent receives

packets, forwards to
correspondent forwards to mobile
foreign agent visited
network
home
network 4
wide area
2 network
3
correspondent requests, 1 4
receives foreign address
mobile replies
of mobile
directly to
correspondent
 Mobility via Direct Routing: comments

• overcome triangle routing problem

• non-transparent to correspondent:
correspondent must get care-of-address from
home agent
– what if mobile changes visited network?
 Accommodating mobility with direct routing
• anchor foreign agent: FA in first visited network
– with publicly routable IP address that acts as an
anchor point when a mobile moves to a new
foreign agent.
• data always routed first to anchor FA
• when mobile moves: new FA arranges to have
foreign net visited
data forwarded from old
anchor FA (chaining)
at session start

foreign
wide area agent
2
network
1 4
3
5
new
correspondent foreign
new foreign
agent network
correspondent agent
• Outline
– Mobility Approaches
– Mobile IP

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 Mobile IP
• Mobile IP (or MIP) is an Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) standard communications protocol
• It is designed to allow mobile device users to move from
one network to another while maintaining a permanent
IP address.
• It is an enhancement of the Internet Protocol (IP)
• It adds mechanisms for forwarding Internet traffic to
mobile devices (known as mobile nodes) when they are
connecting through other than their home network.
• It is scalable for the Internet because it is based on IP—
any media that can support IP can support Mobile IP.
• Example Applications: Remote login, remote printing,
and file transfers
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 Components of a Mobile IP Network
• Mobile IP has the following three components
– Mobile Node: - is a device such as a cell phone, personal
digital assistant, or laptop whose software enables network
roaming capabilities.
– Home Agent : - is a router on the home network serving as
the anchor point for communication with the Mobile Node;
• it tunnels packets from a device on the Internet, called a
Correspondent Node, to the roaming Mobile Node
– Foreign Agent : - is a router that may function as the point of
attachment for the Mobile Node when it roams to a foreign
network,
• delivers packets from the Home Agent to the Mobile Node.

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 Mobile IP (MIPv4)
Foreign
Network B
R

Home
network A Foreign Agent
R Internet

Home Agent Network C

R

Correspondent
Node C

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 Mobile IP (cont)
• Idea
– New IP address associated with the new point of
attachment is required
• Two IP addresses for mobile node
– Home address: static
– Care-of address: topologically significant address

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 How Mobile IP Works
• Three Mobile IP steps:
1. Discovery
2. Registering
3. Tunneling

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 Discovery
– A Mobile Node Identifies its home and foreign agents
– the Home Agent and Foreign Agent advertise their services on the
network by using the ICMP Router Discovery Protocol (IRDP).
– The Mobile Node listens to these advertisements to determine if it
is connected to its home network or foreign network.
– The IRDP advertisements carry Mobile IP extensions that specify
– whether an agent is a Home Agent, Foreign Agent, or both;
– its care-of address;
– the allowed registration lifetime or roaming period for visiting
Mobile Nodes
– Allows for the detection of mobility agents
– Informs the mobile node about special features
– Mobile node issues an ICMP router solicitation message

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 Registration
• Registration involves four steps (foreign agent care-of address):
– The mobile node requests the forwarding service by sending a
registration request to the foreign agent that the mobile node
wants to use
• UDP port 434
– The foreign agent relays the request to the mobile node’s home
agent
– The home agent either accepts or denies the request and sends a
registration reply to the foreign agent
– The foreign agent relays the reply to the mobile node
• Co-located care-of address
– Mobile sends registration directly to Home Agent
• Registration involves authentication
– mobile nodes typically wireless – subject to eavesdropping and
active attacks 26
 Registration

Foreign Network B
R

Home Network A
 Mobile Node
R Internet Foreign Agent

Home Agent
Network C
R

Foreign agent sends Binding Update

Home Agent replies with Binding Acknowledgement Correspondent
Node C
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 Registration (Example)
Mobility binding table at Home Agent
Home address Care-of address Lifetime (sec)
128.119.40.186 79.129.13.2 150
… … …

Visitor List at Foreign Agent

Home address Home agent Media address Lifetime
address
128.119.40.186 128.119.40.7 00-56-80-56-A1-E1 150

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 Registration (Example)
visited network: 79.129.13/24
home agent foreign agent
HA: 128.119.40.7 COA: 79.129.13.2 ICMP agent adv.
Mobile node
COA: 79.129.1 3.2 MA: 128.119.40.186
….

registration req.
registration req.
COA: 79.129.13.2
COA: 79.129.13.2 HA: 128.119.40.7
HA: 128.119.40.7 MA: 128.119.40.186
MA: 128.119.40.186 Lifetime: 9999
Lifetime: 9999 identification:714
identification: 714 ….
encapsulation format
….

registration reply
time registration reply
HA: 128.119.40.7
MA: 128.119.40.186
Lifetime: 4999 HA: 128.119.40.7
Identification: 714 MA: 128.119.40.18 6
encapsulation format Lifetime: 4999
…. Identification: 714
….

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 Tunneling
• Data packets addressed to the Mobile Node are routed to its
home network
• the Home Agent now intercepts and tunnels them to the
care-of address toward the Mobile Node.
• Tunneling has two primary functions:
– encapsulation of the data packet to reach the tunnel
endpoint, and
– decapsulation when the packet is delivered at that endpoint.
• Typically, the Mobile Node sends packets to the Foreign
Agent, which routes them to their final destination, the
Correspondent Node

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 Indirect Routing via Tunneling
• Home agent broadcasts ARP request which causes all nodes in
the Home network to update their ARP caches to map the mobile
nodes IP address to the home agents link level address.

foreign-agent-to-mobile packet
packet sent by home agent to foreign agent: a dest: 128.119.40.186
packet within a packet (Tunnel)

dest: 79.129.13.2 dest: 128.119.40.186

Permanent address:
128.119.40.186
Care-of address:
79.129.13.2
dest: 128.119.40.186
packet sent by mobile replies directly to
correspondent correspondent
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• Security issues
– Ingress filtering
Many border router discard packets coming from within the
enterprise if the packets do not contain a source IP address
configured for one of the enterprise’s internal network
Mobile node would otherwise use their home address as the
source IP address of the packets they transmit
– What if there is a malicious agent
• Authentication using cryptography

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 Problems with MIPv4
• Authentication with FA is difficult as it belongs to
another organization
• Guaranteeing QoS to a flow of packets is difficult
because of triangulation and tunneling
• Triangular routing and frequent handoffs cause
significant end-to-end delay
• High signaling load on HA if mobile node moves
frequently
• To support Global mobility, all routers should have FA
and HA functionality
• For some applications, it may be important to track the
location of mobile nodes : causes huge power and
signaling load 33
• Reference
– Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks, 4th Edition.
• Ch 5
– 5.6.7
– William Stallings, Wireless Communication and Networks
, 2nd Edition.
• Ch 12
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_IP
– http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios/solutions_docs/
mobile_ip/mobil_ip.html

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