Policy based access router selections and context transfers in mobile IP network

In mobile Internet Protocol (IP) networks, a handover occurs when a mobile node (MN) moves from one cell to another. The result of a handover is that the mobile node connects to the network through a new access router (AR). A handover may occur between access routers of the same or different administrative domains. In both cases, to provide seamless handover the new access router needs to be selected first, then the information related to the mobile node, also called context, has to be transferred from the old access router to the new access router. This operation is called context transfer. In this paper we propose a policy-based scheme for access router selection and seamless context transfer mechanism. We also provide an analysis to show that this is efficient, secure and does not require significant changes to the existing network infrastructure.