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Recent wireless networks tend to include diverse access technologies with the rapid development of wireless and mobile technology. Mobile devices are equipped with several physical interfaces, called a multi-homing host, to support various access technology networks. According to the rapid increase of multi-homing hosts, inter-technology handover is supported while moving. Moreover, there are many attempts to enhance the mobility management by taking the advantages of Software Defined Networking (SDN), which decouples the control and data planes of a network by relying on simple functions.

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), a network-based mobility protocol, does not need the participation of mobile nodes (MNs) in the signaling process. PMIPv6 can support multi-homing, inter-technology handover, and flowmobility, with the help of a host’s virtual interface (VI). Several single virtual interface (SVI) schemes have been proposed to support these functions. However, they have the link-layer identifier (LL-ID) swapping problem. In addition, PMIPv6 has several weak points. The control and data packets are delivered and processed over the same network entities, which prevents the separation of the control and the data planes. IP tunneling inherent to PMIPv6 imposes excessive overhead for the network entities.
In this thesis, two mobility enhancements of PMIPv6 are presented in terms of inter-technology handover with multiple virtual interfaces (MVIs) and a new mobility scheme based on OpenFlow architecture. MVIs scheme is proposed to support inter-technology handover without LL-ID swapping procedure. OpenFlow-based PMIPv6 is proposed to adapt PMIPv6 to the OpenFlow architecture for supporting mobility management over SDN.

In the SVI schemes, the LL-ID should be swapped while the host is processing neighbor discovery (ND) after inter-technology handover or flow mobility. That is, a host must replace the LL-ID of a VI contained in a neighbor advertisement with the LL-ID of a physical interface (PI) related to a real connection. Such LL-ID swapping cannot be executed under secure neighbor discovery, and it causes ND processing delay and high overhead to check all outgoing packets. MVIs scheme solves the problem related to the LL-ID swapping, and to provide good support to the inter-technology handover. There are the same numbers of VIs as the PIs between the data link layer and the network layer of a host. Since each VI maintains its own neighbor cache, the proposed scheme does not require LL-ID swapping, so that it can keep the standard ND process.

PMIPv6 is adapted to the OpenFlow architecture in order to support mobility management for SDN. Mobility management functions are separated from the components of PMIPv6. The components are reconstructed. The components configure the flow table of the switches located in a path, which comprise the OpenFlow controller. Mobility-related signaling between a controller and switches can then be performed through the dedicated secure channel, and all of the data packets can be sent normally in accordance with the flow table of the OpenFlow switches. Consequently, the proposed scheme eliminates IP tunneling when user traffic is forwarded and separates the data and the control planes.  

Chapter 1 Introduction	1
1.1 Background	1
1.2 Proxy Mobile IPv6	2
1.2.1 Single Virtual Interface Schemes	2
1.2.2 Weaknesses of PMIPv6	3
1.3 Approaches	3
1.3.1 Multiple Virtual Interfaces	4
1.3.2 OpenFlow-based PMIPv6	4
1.4 Organization of the thesis	5
Chapter 2 Related Works	6
2.1 IP Mobility Protocols	6
2.1.1 Host-based Mobility	7
2.1.1.1 Mobile IPv6	7
2.1.2 Network-based Mobility	8
2.1.2.1 Proxy Mobile IPv6	9
2.2 Network-based Inter-technology Handover	13
2.2 Virtual Interface Schemes	15
2.2.1 Logical Interface Support for Multi-access enabled IP Hosts	16
2.2.2 Virtual Interface for Multiple Interfaces in a Host	19
2.2.3 Problem Statement	20
2.3 OpenFlow Protocol	21
2.3.1 OpenFlow Components	22
2.3.2 OpenFlow Switch	23
2.3.3 OpenFlow Ports	24
2.3.3.1 Physical Ports	25
2.3.3.2 Logical Ports	25
2.3.3.3 Reserved Ports	26
2.3.4 OpenFlow Tables	27
2.3.4.1 Pipeline Processing	27
2.3.4.2 Flow Table	29
2.3.4.3 Matching	30
2.3.4.4 Table-miss	31
2.3.4.5 Flow Removal	32
2.3.4.6 Instructions	33
2.3.4.7 Actions	34
2.3.5 Packet Processing	35
2.3.6 Topology Discovery	36
Chapter 3 Multiple Virtual Interfaces to Support Inter-technology Handover for Heterogeneous Network	38
3.1 Introduction	38
3.2 Multiple Virtual Interfaces Scheme	39
3.2.1 Overview	39
3.2.2 Basic Operation	40
3.2.3 Inter-technology Handover	42
3.2.3.1 Initial Attachment	43
3.2.3.2 Inter-technology Handover	46
3.3. Evaluation and Simulation	48
3.3.1 Scheme Evaluation	48
3.3.2 Performance Evaluation	50
Chapter 4 OpenFlow-based PMIPv6 over Software Defined Networking	54
4.1 Introduction	54
4.2 OpenFlow-based PMIPv6	54
4.2.1 Architecture	54
4.2.2 Control Plane	56
4.2.3 Data Plane	59
4.2.4 Basic Operations	60
4.2.4.1 OpenFlow-based PMIPv6	60
4.2.4.2 OpenFlow-based PMIPv6-C	63
4.2.5 Comparison with PMIPv6	65
4.3 Performance Evaluation	68
4.3.1 Network Model	68
4.3.2 Mobility Model	70
4.3.3 PMIPv6 and OpenFlow Messages	71
4.3.4 Cost Modeling	72
4.3.4.1 Proxy Mobile IPv6	73
4.3.4.2 OpenFlow-based PMIPv6	74
4.3.4.3 OpenFlow-based PMIPv6-C	76
4.3.5 Handover Latency	76
4.3.5.1 Basic Handover Process	77
4.3.5.2 PMIPv6 Handover Latency	78
4.3.5.3 OPMIPv6 Handover Latency	79
4.3.5.4 OPMIPv6-C Handover Latency	79
4.3.6 Cost Analysis Results	80
4.3.6.1 Signaling Cost	80
4.3.6.2 Packet Delivery Cost	81
4.3.6.2 Total Cost	83
4.3.7 Handover Latency Analysis	85
Chapter 5 Conclusions	87
Bibliography	89