B3G Cluster Workshop on Mobility Technologies in the Internet

Brussels, October 3^rd 2006

Workshop Description

This workshop will be organized by the IST ENABLE project, a Specific Targeted Research Project funded by EU FP6 program in collaboration with the commission and within the activities of the Beyond 3G-SA cluster. The goal is to provide researchers, engineers and IT managers with a concentrated day on the state of the art technologies on mobility and their security and applicability aspects. Presentations for this workshop will be primarily from EU FP6 projects within the B3G cluster. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants will be armed with a comprehensive understanding of advances and technologies developed within EU projects, in particular the recent developments and open issues of mobile networking, its evolution to B3G/4G and advanced mobile network services.

Agenda

09:00-09:10 Welcome: Ivano Guardini and Andrew Houghton

09:10-09:40 General Presentation of the Workshop

· State of the art on IP mobility and related applicability scenarios: vision of the IST ENABLE project

· Ivano Guardini, Antonio F. Gómez Skarmeta and Xiaoming Fu

09:40-10:20 Keynote Presentation

· A Key Approach for Seamless and Secure Handover for Heterogeneous Mobility using PANA, IEEE 802.21 and Pre-authentication

· Yoshihiro Ohba, Toshiba America Research, Inc.

10:20-10:40 ENABLE

· MIPv6 bootstrapping and HA load-sharing

· Wolfgang Fritsche, IABG

10:40-11:00 DAIDALOS

· Daidalos Seamless Mobility Technologies

· Telemaco Melia, NEC Network Laboratories

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break

11:15-11:45 AMBIENT NETWORKS

· Trigger management and handover constraint selection in Ambient Networks

· Mobility support for the node ID architecture

· Kostas Pentikousis, VTT

11:45-12:05 UNITE

· UNITE PLATFORM for cross-system/CROSS-LAYER SCENARIOS

· George Kormentzas, University of the Aegean

12:05-12:45 Keynote Presentation

· Mobility in the Internet - Market Opportunities

· Patrick Grossetete, CISCO

12:45-13:00 Workshop conclusion

· Summary of results relevant for the Beyond 3G cluster

· Norbert Niebert, Ericsson

Detailed Agenda

State of the art on IP mobility and related applicability scenarios: vision of the IST ENABLE project

Speaker’s name: Ivano Guardini

Email: ivano.guardini@telecomitalia.it

Telecom Italia, Torino, Italy

Project name: ENABLE

Abstract

The rapid diffusion of portable terminals is generating an increasing demand for a “global” mobility service. The users are asking to stay always connected and enjoy a wide variety of voice, data and multimedia services independently of their geographical location, and with performance significantly better than today. The capability to integrate heterogeneous access infrastructures will be the key to cope with these needs, since it will make it possible to deliver ubiquitous mobility much more efficiently and cost-effectively than realizing a global coverage with a single radio technology. Any user equipped with a multi-mode terminal should be able to exploit multiple accesses at the same time and move transparently from one to the other.

There is therefore the need for a common access-independent mobility solution capable to support terminal mobility in large operational networks including multiple administrative domains, heterogeneous access technologies and a rapidly growing number of users.

This presentation will describe the reference network scenario and the main requirements on the target “global” mobility service as devised within the IST ENABLE project. Moreover, it will provide an overview of the IP-based mobility management protocols that the IETF and the research community are designing to cope with these requirements. Technical solutions like Mobile IPv6 and its extensions (e.g. autoconfiguration, interworking with IPv4), SHIM6, NETLMM (NETwork based Localized Mobility Management) and promising, but not yet fully understood, Mobile IPv6 alternatives like HIP (Host Identity Protocol) and I3 will be briefly introduced, with the objective to describe their design principles, purpose and maturity. Rather than entering into the details of each protocol or mechanism, the aim will be to provide a very high level state of the art analysis, highlighting the available functionality and the open issues that are still subject of research.

Finally, possible applicability scenarios of the above mentioned mobility technologies will be presented. Particular attention will be given to the usage scenarios that are currently being envisaged for mobile WiMAX systems and for the evolution of 3GPP networks towards a full IP architecture optimized for the transport of any service over IP. With this respect, the status of the System Architecture Evolution (SAE) effort going on in 3GPP SA2 will be briefly outlined.

A Key Approach for Seamless and Secure Handover for Heterogeneous Mobility using PANA, IEEE 802.21 and Pre-authentication

Keynote Speaker’s name: Yoshihiro Ohba 

Email: yohba@tari.toshiba.com

Toshiba America Research, Inc., USA

Abstract

Emerging IMS (Internet Multimedia Subsystem) services is creating more demand for seamless handover among different network access technologies such as 3GPP and 3GPP2 cellular networks, WiFi and WiMAX networks. IETF and IEEE are working on defining new protocol, i.e., IETF PANA (Protocol for carrying Authentication for Network Access) and IEEE 802.21, as potentially fundamental building blocks to realize secure and seamless handover, together with existing IP layer mobility management protocols such as Mobile IP and Mobile IPv6. The presentation will give introduction to PANA and IEEE 802.21 and its expanded applicability including pre-authentication, as well as implementations and performance results.

Mobility in the Internet - Market Opportunities

Keynote Speaker’s name: Patrick Grossetete

CISCO

Abstract

The presentation will review the different market segments where Mobility" is acknowledged as a key technology, including host mobility versus network in motion associated with specific technologies such as wireless radio. Then, a description of the overall architecture that enables these devices to connect to the Internet will lead to demonstrate that new business opportunities are open to the market.

MIPv6 bootstrapping and HA load-sharing

Speaker’s name: Wolfgang Fritsche

Email: fritsche@iabg.de

Telephone: +49 89 6088 2897

IABG, Ottobrunn Munich, Germany

Project name: ENABLE

Abstract

Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as protocol providing mobility support for roaming hosts transparently to applications and user. While the core functionality of MIPv6 is standardized and mature enough for deployment, there are many other aspects to be considered before doing a large-scale operational deployment. Among these are the provision of mechanisms

to authenticate the Mobile Node (MN) and authorize the mobility support service,

to assign automatically a suitable Home Agent (HA) and Home Address (HoA) to the MN,

to provide HA and MN with the respective security credentials for setting up a secure signalling channel between them, and

to support the deployment of multiple HAs in order to increase the dependability and scalability of the HA service.

The authentication of the mobility support service, the automatic HA and HoA assignment to the MN as well as the establishment of a secure signalling channel between HA and MN are mainly handled in the bootstrapping phase of a MN, which is currently investigated within the IETF, but also within research activities such as ENABLE.

The presentation will report about the investigation results achieved in ENABLE with regard to a design for bootstrapping a MN. This design will consider different bootstrapping scenarios, such as split scenarios, in which Access Service Authorizer (ASA) and Mobility Service Authorizer (MSA) are different entities, as well as integrated scenarios, in which ASA and MSA are the same entity. Beyond that the presentation will focus on the deployment of multiple HAs along with the establishment of an efficient load sharing between them. In this context the process of selecting the most appropriate HA will be presented, as well as the integration of the HA load sharing approach into the bootstrapping architecture.

Daidalos Seamless Mobility Technologies

Speaker’s name: Telemaco Melia

Email: telemaco.melia@netlab.nec.de

Telephone: +49 6221 4342142

Fax: +49 6221 4342155

NEC Network Laboratories, Heidelberg, Germany

Project name: Daidalos

Abstract

Several indicators point towards the co-existence of heterogeneous networks in the future. These relate to multiple types of access technologies ranging from the fixed network solutions, the 2G/3G networks to the IEEE 802.x, as well as the extension of the existing connection types to ad-hoc, multi-hop, sensor and moving networks. Operators and manufacturers have taken up the development and introduction of dual-mode and multi-mode handsets to permit connectivity across 3G and WLAN-based networks. Currently discussed standards still fail in providing universal solutions that support seamless integration of these networks. Users on the move will experience service discontinuities, so such standardized solutions can only be regarded as a first step.

Tomorrow’s customers will expect the network, and in particular its technological structure, to “disappear” and be of no concern. Along these lines, some solutions have been proposed to support seamless mobility based on the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). While this previous work has shown that the basic concepts are viable, the Daidalos project has moved to a comprehensive approach to provide seamless and pervasive end-to-end services across heterogeneous technologies, offering a broad range of pervasive services accessible regardless of the wireless or wired technology.

The focus of this presentation is on one of the functions included in the Daidalos architecture - the Network Initiated Handover (NIHO) function. This function aims at solving a problem of existing IP based architectures. Specifically, in existing architectures handovers are typically initiated by terminals upon detecting that the quality of the signal received from the Access Point (AP) or Base Station (BS) degrades below a certain threshold. However, this can easily lead to non optimal distributions in which some APs are heavily loaded while neighboring APs -that could take part of this load- are underutilized.

In order to address the above problem, the Daidalos architecture combines mobile-initiated handovers (MIHO) with network initiated handovers (NIHO). With NIHO handovers are controlled or triggered by the network based on global information, such as load distribution, terminal location. In this way, it can be guaranteed that the load distribution among the various APs in the network is optimal. The NIHO function involves the decision of which handovers to trigger as well as their execution. Daidalos, starting from current upcoming standards, such as IEEE 802.21, proposes enhancements mapping the MARQS paradigm, in particular considering mobility, resource management and quality of service.

Trigger management and handover constraint selection in Ambient Networks

Speaker’s name (not yet confirmed): Jochen Eisl
Email: jochen.eisl@siemens.com
Telephone: +49 89 636 75125

Siemens AG
Project name: Ambient Networks

Abstract

The need for introducing a framework for event management has been recognized by the project. For the purpose of handover and some other network services a 'Triggering' functional entity has been specified and implemented to collect, filter, classify and deliver triggers. The benefit of this architectural approach is that event handling can be centrally controlled taking into account various types of events. The presentation explains how triggering can interact with other functionalities entities like 'Handover and Locator Management' and 'Multiradio Resource Management' to derive the most appropriate handover decision and make use of the required handover tools in a heterogeneous network environment like assumed by 'Ambient Networks'

Mobility support for the node ID architecture

Abstract

The node ID architecture has been adopted by the 'Ambient Networks' project to eliminate one of the current Internet architecture's problem: node and endpoint identifiers are bound to their current locations. This intertwinement imposes security and mobility related concerns (amongst others), which are not acceptable for the design of B3G networks. One suggested mechanism to enable the locator - identifier split is the 'host identity protocol' (HIP). The presentation shows how the base HIP protocol currently developed in IETF has been extended and implemented to support mobility management in a more efficient way by enabling delegation of HIP signaling to proxy nodes and support mobility of groups of nodes at the same time.

UNITE PLATFORM for cross-system/CROSS-LAYER SCENARIOS

Speaker’s name: George Kormentzas

Email: gkorm@aegean.gr

Telephone: +302273082235
Fax: +302273082009

Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, University of the Aegean, Samos, Greece

Project name: UNITE

Abstract

This work discusses the architectural guidelines that are going to be followed by the UNITE project, in order to build a simulation platform for validating cross-system/cross-layer algorithms. The proposed platform is going to integrate existing hardware and software clusters of various heterogeneous wireless technologies under a unified distributed testbed. A rough architectural picture of the testbed in case of two software clusters (concerning WLAN and UMTS radio technologies) is depicted in Figure 1. The major components are:

• The UNITE Distributed Virtual Testbed (DVT) main controller
• The Central Controller
• The Simulation Clusters consisting basically of:

o The Cluster Controller and

o The Simulator

The UNITE DVT main controller connects through SOAP to external applications that provide functionalities, like user management, simulation editing, monitoring, etc. DVT also interacts with the Central Controller. The latter module manages all cluster control interactions and distributes all events among all cluster instances (e.g., Pythagor WLAN cluster and NS2 with modified UMTS Extensions cluster). The input parameters of the experiment cross-sytem/cross-layer scenario are going to be provided from the user through appropriate graphical interface (see External Application, Figure 1). The input parameters could concern number of nodes, simulation time, random number generator seed, MAC layer access mechanisms (for the Pythagor WLAN simulator), physical layer protocol (i.e. UMTS or 802.11 family protocols) and traffic parameters (e.g., bit rates, packet lengths, etc.). The estimated output metrics could be node and system throughput and node and system delay. The quality metric could be the minimum throughput or maximum delay of the system. The cluster controller computes the above metrics and feeds them to the Central Controller. The latter module compares them and when the defined values (i.e. thresholds) are exceeded, decides when and how to initiate a node reallocation at the simulators, by redistributing this way the terminals to both WLANs and UMTS clusters.

Figure 1. UNITE platform for cross-system/cross-layer scenarios