OpenFlow-based Proxy mobile IPv6 over software defined network (SDN)

Abstract

Software Defined Network (SDN) is widely deployed by using OpenFlow protocol for the implementation of flexible networking. A lot of researches are progressing to adapt OpenFlow to existing network architectures. PMIPv6 is proposed to handle the network-based local mobility using IP tunneling. However, it has some weak points such as IP tunneling overhead and sharing same path for the data and the control planes. In this paper, we propose OpenFlow-based Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) to obtain the advantages of the OpenFlow architecture for PMIPv6 network. The proposed scheme separates the mobility management function from the components of PMIPv6. It preserves the functionalities and messages defined in PMIPv6 but reconstructs components to take the advantages offered by the OpenFlow architecture. The reconstructed components set the flow table of switches located in the path as the controller of OpenFlow. The proposed scheme removes the tunneling to forward user traffic and separates the data and the control planes. OpenFlow-based PMIPv6 offers more flexible deployment architecture.