Multicast support for mobile hosts using Mobile IP: Design issues and proposed architecture

In this paper, we consider the problem of providing multicast to mobile hosts using Mobile IP for network routing support. Providing multicast in an internetwork with mobile hosts is made difficult because many multicast protocols are inefficient when faced with frequent membership or location changes. This basic difficulty can be handled in a number of ways, but three main problems emerge with most solutions. The tunnel convergence problem, the duplication problem, and the scoping problem are identified in this paper and a set of solutions are proposed. The paper describes an architecture to support IP multicast for mobile hosts using Mobile IP. The basic unicast routing capability of Mobile IP is used to serve as the foundation for the design of a multicast service facility for mobile hosts. We believe that our scheme is transparent to higher layers, simple, flexible, robust, scalable, and, to the extent possible, independent of the underlying multicast routing facility. For example, our scheme could interoperate with DVMRP, MOSPF, CBT, or PIM in the current Internet. Where differences exist between the current version of IP (IPv4) and the next generation protocol (IPv6), these differences and any further optimizations are discussed.