Location-aware multimedia proxy handoff over the IPv6 mobile network environment

In a server-proxy-client 3-tier networking architecture that is executed in the mobile network, proxies should be dynamically assigned to serve mobile hosts according to geographical dependency and the network situation. The goal of proxy handoff is to allow a mobile host still can receive packets from the corresponding server while its serving proxy is switched from the current one to another one. Once proxy handoff occurs, a proper proxy should be selected based on the load balance concern and the network situation concern. In this paper, a 3-tier Multimedia Mobile Transmission Platform, called MMTP, is proposed to solve the proxy handoff problem in the IPv6-based mobile network. A proxy handoff scheme based on the application-layer anycasting technique is proposed in MMTP. A proper proxy is selected from a number of candidate proxies by using the application-layer anycast. An experimental environment based on MMTP is also built to analyze the performance metrics of MMTP, including load balance among proxies and handoff latency. (C) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.