Network Mobility (NEMO) efficiently manages the mobility of multiple nodes that moves together as a mobile network. A major limitation of the basic protocol in NEMO is the inefficient route between end hosts. A number of prefix delegation-based schemes have been proposed in the literature to solve the route optimization problem in NEMO. Approaches used by the schemes trade off delivery of packets through the partially optimized route with signaling and other processing overheads. Cost of delivering packets through the partially optimized route along with signaling and processing cost need to be measured to find out the gain from tradeoff. However, cost analysis performed so far on NEMO protocols consider only the cost of signaling. In this paper, we have developed analytical framework to measure the costs of the basic protocol for NEMO, and four representative prefix delegation-based schemes. Our results show that cost of packet delivery through the partially optimized route dominates over other costs. Therefore, optimizing the route completely is preferable to reduction of signaling as far as cost of network mobility is concerned. Our cost analysis framework will help in decision making to select the best route optimization scheme depending on the load imposed by the scheme on the infrastructure.

A number of prefix delegation-based schemes have been proposed to solve the route optimization problem in NEMO, where a group of hosts move together as a mobile network. The schemes trade off between inefficiency of routes and various overheads. With the rapid growth of mobile computing, this overhead will give rise to the scalability issue of these schemes. However, there has been no quantitative study on the asymptotic scalability analysis of these schemes. In this paper, we have developed analytical models for scalability analysis of these schemes in terms of network size, mobility rate, distance between mobility agents, and traffic rate. Our analysis shows that the prefix delegation-based schemes exhibit asymptotically identical overhead on the network, and they show better asymptotical scalability in terms of number of mobile routers. The analytical framework for scalability analysis presented in this paper will help in visualizing the effects of future network expansion on the performance of these route optimization schemes of NEMO.

Among the route optimization schemes in NEtwork MObility (NEMO), the prefix delegation-based schemes perform better than other schemes. Since the prefix delegation-based schemes are designed for communication between a mobile network and a wired network, they lack evaluation for the case of intra mobile network communication involving MIPv6 incapable hosts in a mobile network. We evaluate prefix delegation-based schemes to reveal their inefficiencies for the case where both the communicating hosts are mobile and MIPv6 incapable, propose extensions, and compare them. Since both the communicating hosts are mobile, handoff latency in extended schemes are large resulting in significant performance loss when the speed of the mobile network is high. Results reveal that the effect of speed of the mobile network dominates the performance in such cases. We conclude that for slow moving mobile networks, extended schemes are preferable.

Among the schemes, proposed in the literature to solve the route optimization problem in NEtwork Mobility (NEMO), the prefix delegation-based schemes perform better than other schemes. Depending on the way the prefix are delegated, the prefix delegation-based schemes result in difference in performance under different speed at various distance from the home network (network to which mobile network usually belongs). Therefore, there is a need to evaluate the performance of individual prefix delegation-based scheme to find an appropriate scheme based on speed and distance from home network. In this paper, we identify the differences of the prefix delegation-based schemes using simulation. Results reveal that performance of the schemes depends on speed of the network and distance from home network.