IETF RFC 5568 PDF

Mobile IPv6 enables a mobile node (MN) to maintain its connectivity to the Internet when moving from one Access Router to another, a process referred to as handover. During handover, there is a period during which the mobile node is unable to send or receive packets because of link-switching delay and IP protocol operations. This "handover latency" resulting from standard Mobile IPv6 procedures (namely, movement detection, new Care-of Address configuration, and Binding Update) is often unacceptable to real-time traffic such as Voice over IP (VoIP). Reducing the handover latency could be beneficial to non-real-time, throughput-sensitive applications as well. This document specifies a protocol to improve handover latency due to Mobile IPv6 procedures. This document does not address improving the link-switching latency.

This document updates the packet formats for the Handover Initiate (HI) and Handover Acknowledge (HAck) messages to the Mobility Header Type.