Hybrid user- and network- initiated flow handoff support for multihomed mobile hosts

In converged wireless networks, a multihomed mobile host can access to multiple networks simultaneously and would expect to strategically hand off traffic flows among the interfaces and access networks to achieve always-best-connected communications with or without the support from the network. At present, there is little preexisting work that has adequately addressed the problem of supporting both user- and network-initiated handoffs of selected flows in a unified architecture. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach to manage both kinds of handoffs in a flexible yet standard-oriented way by enhancing mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) or its variant hierarchical MIPv6. Address management strategies in mobile host multihoming context are investigated, and the corresponding architectural and protocol choices are presented and analysed. Particularly, the proposed comprehensive flow handoff management is described with signalling and operations highlighted.