Mobile hosts in a wireless network can move from one location to another while maintaining continuous network connections. This project aims to develop routing mechanisms for wireless networks that are scalable and are compatible with wired networks. It integrates the basic IP mobility support with hierarchical dynamic routing protocols, allowing efficient routing to mobile hosts through secure and incremental propagation of location information. It separates mobile handoff due to the air interface from routing handoff at the network layer. Such separation provides flexible tradeoffs between routing traffic and routing efficiency. Both mobile hosts and mobile support routers are able to control location propagation as route changes, in order to adapt to different requirements of applications and network management. By involving the home agent of a mobile host only in a routing handoff, it leads to a new mobile handoff procedure with a shorter delay. It offers better support for multicast from mobile hosts by control over location propagation and facilitates multicast to mobile hosts by a notion of potential group membership. The project includes the construction of a wireless network simulator and the implementation of a wireless network testbed. The simulator allows detailed performance studies and a deeper understanding of different alternatives for routing and mobility support in local as well as wide area wireless networks. The testbed offers an experimental tool for migrating existing applications to wireless networks and for gaining practical experiences of network communications on mobile hosts. Tools developed in this project will be incorporated into appropriate undergraduate and graduate courses. Transparent, flexible and efficient routing is critical to seamless network access by mobile hosts as they move between networks in vastly different environments. Insights gained in this project on routing support for mobile hosts will also shed light on building m obility-aware applications at higher levels.
