On supporting mobility and multihoming in recursive internet architectures

As the Internet has evolved and grown, an increasing number of nodes (hosts or autonomous systems) have become multihomed, i.e., a node is connected to more than one network. Mobility can be viewed as a special case of multihoming-as a node moves, it unsubscribes from one network and subscribes to another, which is akin to one interface becoming inactive and another active. The current Internet architecture has been facing significant challenges in effectively dealing with multihoming (and consequently mobility), which has led to the emergence of several custom point-solutions. The Recursive Inter-Network Architecture (RINA) was recently proposed as a clean-slate solution to the current problems of the Internet. In this paper, we present a specification of the process of ROuting in Recursive Architectures (RORA). We also perform an average-case cost analysis to compare the multihoming/mobility support of RINA, against that of other approaches such as LISP and Mobile-IP. Extensive experimental results confirm the premise that the RINA architecture and its RORA routing approach are inherently better suited for supporting mobility and multihoming. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.