A Characterization of Mobility Management in User-Centric Networks

Abstract

Mobility management is a key aspect to consider in future Internet architectures, as these architectures include a highly nomadic end-user which often relies on services provided by multi-access networks. In contrast, today’s mobility management solutions were designed having in mind simpler scenarios and requirements from the network and where roaming could often be taken care of with previously established agreements. With a more dynamic behavior in the network, and also with a more prominent role from the end-user, mobility management has to deal with additional requirements derived from new Internet paradigms. To assist in understanding such requirements and also how to deal with them, this paper proposes a starting point to dismantle current mobility management notions. Our contribution is an initial proposal on defining mobility management in concrete functional blocks, their interaction, as well as a potential grouping which later can assist in deriving novel and more flexible mobility management architectures.

This work has been developed in the context of project UMM: User-centric Mobility Management, reference PTDC/EEA-TEL/105709/2008, sponsored by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.