
128 Chapter 6: Metro Mobility: Client-Based Mobile IP
Although the Mobile IP tunnel has been established for the lifetime granted in the RRQ, the
actual life of the tunnel depends on the NAT state information being current on the tunnel. To
this end, keepalive messages are sent to ensure that the UDP tunnel through the NAT gateway
retains the NAT translation state information if traffic has not been sent down the tunnel in a
specified amount of time. Essentially, the keepalive serves as a message saying, “Although
traffic hasn’t been sent down this tunnel in a while, it is still valid. Please keep it up.” The
keepalive message is a properly UDP-encapsulated ...