Definition and Characteristics of Mobile IP - Essay Example

The cost of implementation of Mobile IP can vary among the particular IT firms that offer this technology. Moreover, many issues need to be taken into account when deciding on the type of Mobile IP that will be implemented in a specific area. For this reason, the presentation of accurate costs related to the above technology is a very difficult task – we could even say that is not feasible – because the costs are formulated by the needs and the demands of each interested customer and cannot be standardized for all potential users.

On the other hand, the problems related to the implementation of Mobile IP both by an individual or a company can be many. In this context it has been stated by Mobile IP Overview (2006) that the common problems related with the Mobile IP technology can be classified in the following categories: Indirect routing: Consider that if a mobile node happens to move to the same subnetwork as its correspondent node that wants to send it datagrams, this is what will happen for the datagram to be received by the mobile node, based on the base Mobile IP protocol: the correspondent node will send the datagram to the mobile node's home agent, which may be a half globe away; its home agent will then forward the datagram to its care-of-address, which might just take a half-second to reach if the datagram is sent directly from the correspondent node.

This kind of "indirect routing" is inefficient and undesirable; Too many unwanted duplicated fields in "IP within IP": The way to encapsulate the datagram is to put the original datagram (= IP header + payload) inside another IP envelope, of which the whole packet = outer IP header (Care-of Address) + original datagram. The fields in the outer IP header add too much overhead to the final datagram - several fields are duplicated from the inner IP header. This waste of unnecessary space is uneconomical; The fragility of the Single home agent model: Although the single home agent model is simple and easy to configure, it has the disadvantage of fragility.