A Comparative Study of Network Mobility Paradigms

Effective solutions for the mobility of whole networks are essential for ubiquitous Internet access. Different network mobility paradigms have different consequences in terms of signalling load, performance and scalability. In this paper, a comparison of three network mobility paradigms is presented, namely the legacy-compatible, the infrastructure-centric and the end-node-centric network mobility paradigms. The study is unprecedented not only because the three paradigms encompass most of the existing network mobility solutions, but also because it involves scenarios with up to 22,800 routers, 11,250 networks, more than 27,000 nodes (fixed and mobile) and up to 16 levels of network mobility nesting. The obtained results point to the very good potential of the end-node-centric network mobility paradigm.