MOBILE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

(ETL442)

LECTURE NOTES B.TECH

(IV YEAR – I SEM)

(2024-25)

Prepared by:

Dr. Mrs. Anushka Kadage, Assistant Professor

Mr.V. B. Sutar, Assistant Professor

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

DKTE Society’s Textile and Engineering Institute, Ichalkaranji

(An Empowered Autonomous Institution)

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 CHAPTER 6

MOBILE NETWORK AND

TRANSPORT LAYER

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Motivation for Mobile IP:
➢ IP Routing:
 based on IP destination address, network prefix (e.g. 129.13.42) determines physical subnet
 change of physical subnet implies change of IP address to have a topologically correct
address (standard IP) or needs special entries in the routing tables
➢ Specific routes to end-systems?:
 requires changing all routing table entries to forward packets to the right destination
 does not scale with the number of mobile hosts and frequent changes in the location, security
problems
➢ Changing the IP-address?:
 adjust the host IP address depending on the current location
 almost impossible to find a mobile system, DNS updates take long time
 TCP connections break, security problems
What Mobile IP does:
➢ Mobile IP solves the following problems:
 if a node moves without changing its IP address it will be unable to receive its packets,
 if a node changes its IP address it will have to terminate and restart its ongoing connections
everytime it moves to a new network area (new network prefix).
➢ Mobile IP is a routing protocol with a very specific purpose.

➢ Mobile IP is a network layer solution to node mobility in the Internet.

➢ Mobile IP is not a complete solution to mobility, changes to the transport protocols need to be made
for a better solution (i.e., the transport layers are unaware of the mobile node’s point of attachment and
it might be useful if, e.g., TCP knew that a wireless link was being used!).
Goals of Mobile IP:
➢ Transparency:
 mobile end-systems keep their IP address  continuation of communication after interruption of link
possible  point of connection to the fixed network can be changed
➢ Compatibility:
 support of the same layer 2 protocols as IP  no changes to current end-systems and routers required
 mobile end-systems can communicate with fixed systems
➢ Security:

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 authentication of all registration messages
➢ Efficiency and scalability
 only little additional messages to the mobile system required (connection typically via a low
bandwidth radio link)
 world-wide support of a large number of mobile systems in the whole Internet.
Mobile IP Terminology Entities:
➢ Mobile Node (MN):
 system (node) that can change the point of connection to the network without changing its IP address
➢ Home Agent (HA)
 system in the home network of the MN, typically a router  registers the location of the MN, tunnels
IP datagrams to the COA
➢ Foreign Agent (FA)
 system in the current foreign network of the MN, typically a router
 forwards the tunneled datagrams to the MN, typically also the default router for the MN
➢ Care-of Address (COA)
 address of the current tunnel end-point for the MN (at FA or MN)
 actual location of the MN from an IP point of view  can be chosen, e.g., via DHCP
➢ Correspondent Node (CN) At least one communication partner. either mobile /fixed device.

IP packet delivery:
➢ 1. Sender sends to the IP address of MN, HA intercepts packet (proxy ARP)

➢ 2. HA tunnels packet to COA, here FA, by encapsulation

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➢ 3.FA forwards the packet to the MN

Agent discovery:
• Agent Advertisement
• HA and FA periodically send advertisement messages into their physical subnets
• MN listens to these messages and detects, if it is in the home or a foreign network (standard case for
home network)
• MN reads a COA from the FA advertisement messages
• Agent Solicitation
• Registration (always limited lifetime!)
• MN signals COA to the HA via the FA, HA acknowledges via FA to MN
• these actions have to be secured by authentication
• Advertisement
• HA advertises the IP address of the MN (as for fixed systems), i.e. standard routing information
• routers adjust their entries, these are stable for a longer time (HA responsible for a MN over a longer
period of time)
• packets to the MN are sent to the HA, • independent of changes in COA/FA
• Agent advertisement:

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type = 16
• length = 6 + 4 * #COAs
• R: registration required
• B: busy, no more registrations
• H: home agent
• F: foreign agent
• M: minimal encapsulation
• G: GRE encapsulation
• r: =0, ignored (former Van Jacobson compression)
• T: FA supports reverse tunneling
• reserved: =0, ignored
• Agent Solicitation
• If no agent advertisements are present or the inter-arrival time is too high, and an MN has not received
a COA the mobile node must send agent solicitations. These solicitations are again based on RFC 1256
for router solicitations. Care must be taken to ensure that these solicitation messages do not flood the
network, but basically an MN can search for an FA endlessly sending out solicitation messages.
• Registration
• Having received a COA, the MN has to register with the HA. The main purpose of the registration is
to inform the HA of the current location for correct for-warding of packets. Registration can be done
in two different ways depending on the location of the COA
• If the COA is at the FA, registration is done as illustrated in Figure 8.4 (left). The MN sends its
registration request containing the COA (see Figure 8.5) to the FA which is forwarding the request to
the HA. The HA now sets up a mobility binding containing the mobile node’s home IP address and
the cur-rent COA.

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• If the COA is co-located, registration can be simpler, as shown in Figure 8.4 (right). The MN may
send the request directly to the HA and vice versa.
Mobile IP registration request:

• S: simultaneous bindings
• B: broadcast datagrams
• D: decapsulation by MN
• M mininal encapsulation
• G: GRE encapsulation
• r: =0, ignored
• T: reverse tunneling requested
• x: =0, ignored .
Mobile IP registration reply:

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• UDP packets are used for registration requests. The IP source address of the packet is set to the
interface address of the MN, the IP destination address is that of the FA or HA

Lifetime denotes the validity of the registration in seconds. A value of zero indicates deregistration;
all bits set indicates infinity.
• The home address is the fixed IP address of the MN.
• home agent is the IP address of the HA, and COA represents the tunnel endpoint
• . The 64 bit identification is generated by the MN to identify a request and match it with registration
replies. This field is used for protection against replay attacks of registrations.
• The extensions must at least contain parameters for authentication.

• Tunneling and Encapsulation:

• A tunnel establishes a vir-tual pipe for data packets between a tunnel entry and a tunnel endpoint.
Packets entering a tunnel are forwarded inside the tunnel and leave the tunnel unchanged. Tunneling,
i.e., sending a packet through a tunnel, is achieved by using encapsulation.

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• Encapsulation is the mechanism of taking a packet consisting of packet header and data and putting
it into the data part of a new packet. The reverse operation, taking a packet out of the data part of
another packet, is called Decapsulation
IP-in-IP-encapsulation:
Tunnel between HA and COA.
• The version field ver is 4 for IP ver-sion 4.
• The internet header length (IHL) denotes the length of the outer header in 32 bit words. DS(TOS) is
just copied from the inner header,
• The length field covers the complete encapsulated packet.
• TTL must be high enough so the packet can reach the tunnel endpoint.
• The next field, here denoted with IP-in-IP, is the type of the protocol used in the IP payload. This
field is set to 4, the protocol type for IPv4 because again an IPv4 packet follows after this outer header.
• IP checksum is calculated as usual.
• The next fields are the tunnel entry as source address (the IP address of the HA) and the tunnel exit
point as destination address (the COA).

The version field ver is 4 for IP ver-sion 4.

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• The internet header length (IHL) denotes the length of the outer header in 32 bit words. DS(TOS) is
just copied from the inner header,
• The length field covers the complete encapsulated packet.
• TTL must be high enough so the packet can reach the tunnel endpoint.
• The next field, here denoted with IP-in-IP, is the type of the protocol used in the IP payload. This
field is set to 4, the protocol type for IPv4 because again an IPv4 packet follows after this outer header.
• IP checksum is calculated as usual.
• The next fields are the tunnel entry as source address (the IP address of the HA) and the tunnel exit
point as destination address (the COA).
ii)Minimal encapsulation:

 avoids repetition of identical fields  e.g. TTL, IHL, version,

 only applicable for unfragmented packets, no space left for fragment identification.
iii)Generic routing encapsulation:

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• While IP-in-IP encapsulation and minimal encapsulation work only for IP, the following
encapsulation scheme also supports other network layer protocols in addition to IP. Generic routing
encapsulation (GRE) allows the encapsulation of packets of one protocol suite into the payload portion
of a packet of another protocol suite.
• A minimal GRE header uses only 4 bytes; nevertheless, GRE is flexible enough to include several
mechanisms in its header.
• The C bit indicates if the checksum field is present and contains valid information. If C is set, the
checksum field contains a valid IP checksum of the GRE header and the pay load.
• The R bit indicates if the offset and routing fields are present and contain valid information. The
offset represents the offset in bytes for the first source routing entry. The routing field, if present, has
a variable length and contains fields for source routing.
• If the C bit is set, the offset field is also present and, vice versa, if the R bit is set, the checksum field
must be present. The only reason for this is to align the following fields to 4 bytes. The checksum field
is valid only if C is set, and the offset field is valid only if R is set respectively.
• GRE also offers a key field which may be used for authentication. If this field is present, the K bit is
set.
• . The sequence number bit S indicates if the sequence number field is present, if the s bit is set, strict
source routing is used.
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• reserved fields must be zero and are ignored on reception. The version field contains 0 for the GRE
version
The ver-sion field contains the value zero. The protocol type, again, defines the protocol of the payload
following RFC 3232.
Optimizations:
i) Optimization of packet forwarding
• Change of FA
• packets on-the-fly during the change can be lost
• new FA informs old FA to avoid packet loss, old FA now forwards remaining packets to new
FA
• this information also enables the old FA to release resources for the MN

Triangle routing has the MN correspond directly with the CN using its home address as the
SA
• Firewalls at the foreign network may not allow that
• Multicasting: if a MN is to participate in a multicast group, it needs to use a reverse tunnel
to maintain its association with the home network.
• TTL: a MN might have a TTL that is suitable for communication when it is in its HM. This
TTL may not be sufficient when moving around (longer routes possibly). When using a reverse
tunnel, it only counts as a single hop. A MN does not want to change the TTL everytime it
moves.
➢ Solution: reverse tunneling
Reverse tunneling
• Routers accept often only “topologically correct“ addresses (firewall!)
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• a packet from the MN encapsulated by the FA is now topologically correct
• Multicast and TTL problems solved
• Reverse tunneling does not solve
• all problems with firewalls, the reverse tunnel can be abused to circumvent security
mechanisms (tunnel hijacking)
• optimization of data paths, i.e. packets will be forwarded through the tunnel via the HA to a
sender (longer routes)
• The new standard is backwards compatible
the extensions can be implemented easily.
Problems with Mobile IP
➢ Security • Authentication with FA problematic, for the FA typically belongs to another
organization • No protocol for key management and key distribution has been standardized in
the Internet • patent and export restrictions
➢ Firewalls
• Typically mobile IP cannot be used together with firewalls, special set-ups are needed (such
as reverse tunneling)
➢ QoS
• Many new reservations in case of RSVP
• Tunneling makes it hard to give a flow of packets a special treatment needed for the QoS
DHCP: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
➢ Application
• Simplification of installation and maintenance of networked computers
• Supplies systems with all necessary information, such as ip address, dns server address,
domain name, subnet mask, default router etc.
• Enables automatic integration of systems into an intranet or the internet, can be used to
acquire a coa for mobile ip
➢ Client/Server-Model

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 • The client sends via a MAC broadcast a request to the DHCP server (might be via a DHCP
relay) •
• The client broadcasts a DHCPDISCOVER into the subnet.
• Servers reply to the client’s request with DHCPOFFER and offer a list of configuration para-
meters. The client can now choose one of the configurations offered. The client in turn replies
to the servers, accepting one of the configurations and rejecting the others using
DHCPREQUEST.
• If a server receives a DHCPREQUEST with a rejection, it can free the reserved configuration
for other possible clients. The server with the configuration accepted by the client now
confirms the configu-ration with DHCPACK. This completes the initialization phase.

Mobile Transport Layer

• TCP originally designed for
– Fixed end-systems
– Fixed, wired networks
The wireless communication is characterized by following properties:

1. Limited bandwidth
2. High latency rate
3. High bit error rate
4. Temporary disconnections
5. User Mobility and handoffs

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 All these factors affect the protocols for wireless communication. There have been attempts to
modify the existing protocols in wired networks to comply with wireless environment. Like MACA
for data link layer to replace CSMA/CD and Mobile IP as a substitute for IP in network layer. To
support mobility, protocols in higher layers like TCP in transport layer also needs to be modified or
some alternate protocols need to be proposed. In this module we will understand the performance of
transport layer protocols in wireless communication scenario and study a protocol called Snooping
TCP which is adapted as per characteristics of wireless communications.

Need for optimized transport layer protocols

Standard TCP is a well-established transport layer protocol for wired links and fixed hosts. TCP
provides reliable transmission by re-transmission on time-out and handles end to end delays and packet
losses efficiently. Assuming that the bit error rate over wired links is low, TCP assumes congestion to
be the only cause of packet loss and reacts by reducing the window size before re-transmission of
packets. This mechanism is known as slow start. The scheme works well in wired networks but in
wireless networks, high error rate of links, intermittent connectivity, improper hand offs are the other
reasons for packet loss. In such a situation, if TCP goes into slow-start, it will result in reduction of
bandwidth utilization, poor throughput and high delay hence the performance will be degraded. To
handle this, lots of research has been going on to improve the performance of TCP over wireless links.
All of the researches believe that TCP is the only appropriate model for wireless networks since many
network applications are built on top of TCP therefore it is not possible to change the entire protocol.
Hence it is necessary to propose optimized versions of standard TCP maintaining its performance. The
optimized versions should not tend to make changes on fixed hosts which mean that it should not be
aware of the errors on the wireless link. Many TCP protocols for wireless networks have been
proposed, one of them is I-TCP. In this module, the design and functioning of snoop protocol and how
it overcomes the limitations of I-TCP has been described.
TRADITIONAL TCP:
Mechanisms that influence the efficiency of TCP in a mobile environment
• Congestion control
• Slow start
• Fast retransmit/fast recovery
• Implications on mobility Congestion control
• TCP has been designed for fixed networks with fixed end-systems
• Hardware and software are mature enough to ensure reliability of data
• The probable reason for a packet loss in a fixed network is a temporary overload some point in the
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 transmission path, i.e., a state of congestion at a node
• The packet buffers of a router are filled and the router cannot forward the packets fast enough
• The only thing a router can do in this situation is to drop packets
• The sender notices the missing acknowledgement for the lost packet and assumes a packet loss due
to congestion
• Retransmitting the missing packet and continuing at full sending rate would now be unwise, as this
might only increase the congestion.
Slow start
• The behavior TCP shows after the detection of congestion is called slow start
• The sender always calculates a congestion window for a receiver.
• The start size of the congestion window is one segment (TCP packet).
• This scheme doubles the congestion window every time the acknowledgements come back, which
takes one round trip time (RTT) like 1, 2, 4, 8 etc.
• This is called the exponential growth of the congestion window in the slow start mechanism.
• The exponential growth stops at the congestion threshold.
• As soon as the congestion window reaches the congestion threshold, further increase of the
transmission rate is only linear by adding 1 to the congestion window each time the acknowledgements
come back
• Linear increase continues until a time-out at the sender occurs due to a missing acknowledgement,
or until the sender detects a gap in transmitted data
o the sender sets the congestion threshold to half of the current congestion window
o The congestion window itself is set to one segment
Fast retransmit/fast recovery Fast Retransmit
• A receiver sends acknowledgements only if it receives any packets from the sender.
• Receiving acknowledgements from a receiver also shows that the receiver continuously receives
something from the sender.
• The gap in the packet stream is not due to severe congestion, but a simple packet loss due to a
transmission error.
• The sender can now retransmit the missing packet(s) before the timer expires.
• This behavior is called fast retransmit Fast Recovery
• The receipt of acknowledgements shows that there is no congestion to justify a slow start.
• The sender can continue with the current congestion window.
• The sender performs a fast recovery from the packet loss
• This mechanism can improve the efficiency of TCP dramatically Implications on mobility
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• TCP concludes a congestion situation from a missing acknowledgement
o typically wrong in wireless networks, here we often have packet loss due to transmission errors
o mobility itself can cause packet loss, if e.g. a mobile node roams from one access point (e.g.
foreign agent in Mobile IP) to another while there are still packets in transit to the wrong access
point and forwarding is not possible
• The performance of an unchanged TCP degrades severely
o TCP cannot be changed fundamentally due to the large base of installation in the fixed
network
▪ TCP for mobility has to remain compatible
o The basic TCP mechanisms keep the whole Internet together
Advantage
o simple changes result in significant higher performance
• Disadvantage
o further mix of IP and TCP, no transparent approach
CLASSICAL TCP IMPROVEMENTS:
 Indirect TCP (I-TCP)
• Snooping TCP
• Mobile TCP
• Fast retransmit/fast recovery
• Transmission/time-out freezing
• Selective retransmission
• Transaction-oriented TCP Indirect TCP (I-TCP)

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 • Indirect -TCP:
segments a TCP connection into a
o fixed part - Standard TCP is used
o wireless part - optimized TCP protocol
• splitting of the TCP connection at, e.g., the foreign agent into 2 TCP connections, no real end-to-
end connection any longer
• hosts in the fixed part of the net do not notice the characteristics of the wireless part

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Advantages
• no changes in the fixed network necessary, no changes for the hosts (TCP protocol) necessary, all
current optimizations to TCP still work
• transmission errors on the wireless link do not propagate into the fixed network
• simple to control, mobile TCP is used only for one hop between, e.g., a foreign agent and mobile
host
• therefore, a very fast retransmission of packets is possible, the short delay on the mobile hop is known
Disadvantages:
• loss of end-to-end semantics, an acknowledgement to a sender does now not any longer mean that a
receiver really got a packet, foreign agents might crash
• higher latency possible due to buffering of data within the foreign agent and forwarding to a new FA
Snooping TCP
• the foreign agent buffers all packets with destination mobile host and additionally ‘snoops’ the packet
flow in both directions to recognize acknowledgements
• buffering enable the FA to perform a local retransmission in case of packet loss on the wireless link
• Transparent extension of TCP within the foreign agent
• buffering of packets sent to the mobile host
• lost packets on the wireless link (both directions!) will be retransmitted immediately by the mobile
host or foreign agent, respectively (so called “local” retransmission)
• the foreign agent therefore “snoops” the packet flow and recognizes acknowledgements in both
directions, it also filters ACKs
• changes of TCP only within the foreign agent

Data transfer to the mobile host o FA buffers data until it receives ACK of the MH, FA detects packet
loss via duplicated ACKs or time-out o fast retransmission possible, transparent for the fixed network
• Data transfer from the mobile host o FA detects packet loss on the wireless link via sequence
numbers,
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▪ FA answers directly with a NACK to the MH o MH can now retransmit data with only a very short
delay
• Integration of the MAC layer o MAC layer often has similar mechanisms to those of TCP o thus, the
MAC layer can already detect duplicated packets due to retransmissions and discard them

• Problems:
o snooping TCP does not isolate the wireless link as good as I-TCP
o snooping might be useless depending on encryption schemes
Advantages:
• The end-to-end TCP semantic is preserved
• The correspondent host does not need to be changed; most of the enhancements are in the foreign
agent • It does not need a handover of state as soon as the mobile host moves to another foreign agent.
• It does not matter if the next foreign agent uses the enhancement or not Disadvantages
• Snooping TCP does not isolate the behavior of the wireless link as well as ITCP
• Using negative acknowledgements between the foreign agent and the mobile host assumes additional
mechanisms on the mobile host.
• All efforts for snooping and buffering data may be useless if certain encryption schemes are applied
end-to- end between the correspondent host and mobile host
Mobile TCP:
• Special handling of lengthy and/or frequent disconnections
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• M-TCP splits as I-TCP does
o unmodified TCP fixed network to supervisory host (SH)
o optimized TCP SH to MH
• Supervisory host o no caching, no retransmission o monitors all packets, if disconnection detected
▪ set sender window size to 0
▪ sender automatically goes into persistent mode o old or new SH reopen the window
• Advantages:
o maintains semantics, supports disconnection, no buffer forwarding
• Disadvantages:
o Loss on wireless link propagated into fixed network
o Adapted TCP on wireless link
Fast retransmit / fast recovery
• Change of foreign agent often results in packet loss
o TCP reacts with slow-start although there is no congestion
• Forced fast retransmit
o as soon as the mobile host has registered with a new foreign agent, the MH sends duplicated
acknowledgements on purpose
o this forces the fast retransmit mode at the communication partners o additionally, the TCP on the
MH is forced to continue sending with the actual window size and not to go into slow-start after
registration
• Advantage:
o simple changes result in significant higher performance
• Disadvantage:
o further mix of IP and TCP, no transparent approach
Transmission / time-out freezing
• Mobile hosts can be disconnected for a longer time o no packet exchange possible, e.g., in a tunnel,
disconnection due to overloaded cells or mux. with higher priority traffic o TCP disconnects after time-
out completely
• TCP freezing o MAC layer is often able to detect interruption in advance
o MAC can inform TCP layer of upcoming loss of connection
o TCP stops sending, but does now not assume a congested link
o MAC layer signals again if reconnected
• Advantage:
o scheme is independent of data
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• Disadvantage:
o TCP on mobile host has to be changed, mechanism depends on MAC layer
Selective retransmission
• TCP acknowledgements are often cumulative
o ACK n acknowledges correct and in-sequence receipt of packets up to n
o if single packets are missing quite often a whole packet sequence beginning at the gap has to be
retransmitted (go-back-n), thus wasting bandwidth
• Selective retransmission as one solution:
o RFC2018 allows for acknowledgements of single packets, not only acknowledgements of in-
sequence packet streams without gaps o sender can now retransmit only the missing packets
• Advantage:
o much higher efficiency
• Disadvantage:
o more complex software in a receiver, more buffer needed at the receiver
Transaction oriented TCP:
• TCP phases
• connection setup, data transmission, connection release
• using 3-way-handshake needs 3 packets for setup and release, respectively
• thus, even short messages need a minimum of 7 packets!
• Transaction oriented TCP:
• RFC1644, T-TCP, describes a TCP version to avoid this overhead
• connection setup, data transfer and connection release can be combined
• thus, only 2 or 3 packets are needed
• Advantage
• Efficiency
• Disadvantage
Requires changed TCP
• Mobility not longer transparent

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