IPsec in Mobile IP: A Survey

The increasing demand of mobile gadgets like mobile phones, mini PCs, laptops and tablets etc. has made the Mobile IP (MIP) one of the current research issues of IETF. Mobile IP as the name suggests; protocol which supports mobility of IP-addresses or we can say the mobility of different IP-nodes. Mobile IP has become an important technical tool in the establishment of enveloping computing environment. As people carry smart phones with them all the time and they want to remain connected with the network even when they make a shift from one network to another without losing information. Mobile IP provides the solution for mobility from one home network to foreign network (visited network by mobile node). Mobile IP and its extensions have provided many solutions for mobility with minimum handover latency but still security remains an issue. While moving from one network to another various security problems can arise and can be experienced by the mobile users. This paper provides a study of Mobile IP, security issues in Mobile IP and solutions provided by IPsec suit in Mobile IP. IPsec provides the security to the transport layer and IP layer security. Looking at the available bandwidth of today’s mobile networks as Wireless LAN, GPRS, 3G/4G or even Bluetooth, the estimated performance of Secure MIP is acceptable for the moment. But security has its price as after studying the different approaches for secure MIP we realized that IPsec has 80% impact on the Mobile IP communication. This article mainly focuses on Mobile IPv6 Security, potential threats to MIP, How IPsec works and different security considerations used to secure MIP.