AAA context transfer for seamless and secure multimedia services over All-IP infrastructures

Abstract

The all-IP based architecture for 3G networks and beyond will rely on a number of different access technologies, working seamlessly to support numerous services and applications.Security provisioning is an essential requirement in any such all-embracing network but this introduces an additional delay component to the total handoff delay crucially affecting the prime objective towards seamless mobility.In this paper we present a context transfer solution for seamless and secure multimedia services over all-IP infrastructures.The solution will act as an adhesive between the AAA and mobility management message exchanges by using the latter to forward AAA state information locally.For such a solution existing messages cellular IP were used as triggers and additional messages were introduced to carry the desired AAA context information.The results have shown that the overall handoff delay is reduced by approximately a factor of twenty.Additional results demonstrate the effect of AAA Context Transfer on multimedia services when integrated with the interworking mobility solution of SIP/Cellular IP [1].