REDUCING HANDOFF LATENCY IN MOBILE IPv6 BASED WLAN

Internet technology has widespread throughout the world over the past few years; this technology has offered variety of services and resources to the users. In contrast to traditional fixed networks the world has become mobile. Mobile computing offers users access to resource anytime anywhere. People have started communicating over wireless area networks (WLAN) using laptops and handheld devices such as new generation mobile phones, and PDAs. Internet Engineering Task Force has designed protocols to provide solution to mobile computing. Mobile IP, Mobile IPv4 and Mobile IPv6 provide mobility to users and enable them to communicate with each other while moving. However there are still technical issues that must be overcome before mobility can be widely deployed. One of the most important one is the handoff latency which occurs during change in point of attachment. MIPv6 is designed to provide user mobility by providing different network addresses when moved to a new network; however it still posse’s challenges during handoff in which realtime application such as VoIP, audio and video streaming stops working. This research provides a solution that can improve MIPv6 communication performance during handoff in WLANs. An experimental test bed will be setup in a lab to investigate the real-time applications performance during handoff and latencies will be measured. The experimental results will be used in a simulation scenario to develop methods to speed up the handoff process and reduce the handoff delay.