Mobile Inter-networking with IPv6 : Concepts, Principles and Practices

Part IV

Applying IP Mobility

Any new technology has its share of challenges in deployment. First, technology development and deployment do not always go hand in hand. This is especially the case when the technology is sufficiently large enough for deployment. Second, new technologies always need to find their position in an existing ecosystem of networks of routers, firewalls and network address translators. Some argue that this has become so complicated that an overhaul, rather than co-existence, is needed. This is particularly the case for IPv6. Finally, applications need to be available to make use of the new technology.

These challenges are not specific to Mobile IPv6, which in fact has inherited at least some of these challenges from IPv6. There is widespread acceptance that the current pool of IP addresses will be exhausted, beginning especially in those parts of the world where mobile technology use is exploding. Furthermore, deployment can be incremental covering the access networks and popular applications, followed by more widespread deployment (which need not be uniform across the entire Internet). Finally, Mobile IPv6 does not require applications to be rewritten; applications do not even know about it. Since Application Programming Interfaces have been standardized for IPv6, applications written for IPv6 work with Mobile IPv6. In fact, they work better, since they ...