One document matched: draft-liu-multimob-multicast-receiver-mobility-00.txt


Multimob working group                                          Hui Liu 
Internet Draft                              Huawei Technologies Co.,Ltd. 
Category: Informational                                                
Created: June 14, 2009                                                   
Expires: December 2009                                                 
 
                                      
            Multicast Receiver Mobility (MultiReM) Architecture 
                                      
           draft-liu-multimob-multicast-receiver-mobility-00.txt 


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Abstract 

   This document proposes the architecture and solution options for 
   multicast receiver mobility.  The discussions are restricted only to 
   the receiver mobility with the assumption that the multicast source 
   and network are stationary while the receiver is in the moving state.  
   The suggestions are given on how to integrate mobile IP and fixed 
   multicast protocols to provide the feasible solutions, which 
   involves the aspects of mobile receiver registration, group 
   membership management, tunnel or optimal multicast routing, and 
   handover optimization. 

Conventions used in this document 

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this 
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-2119 [RFC2119]. 

Table of Contents 

    
   1. Introduction.................................................2 
   2. Overview of Mobile Receiver Multicast........................3 
   3. Architecture Aspects of Mobile Receiver Multicast............5 
      3.1. Network Entities........................................5 
      3.2. Address Configuration and Registration Process..........6 
      3.3. Tunnel Mechanism Considerations.........................7 
      3.4. Group Membership Management.............................7 
      3.5. Multicast Tree Construction and Data Forwarding.........8 
      3.6. Handover Considerations................................10 
      3.7. Authentication and Accounting..........................15 
   4. Considerations for Different MIP Protocols..................15 
      4.1. MIPv4..................................................15 
      4.2. MIPv6 and DSMIPv6......................................17 
      4.3. PMIPv6.................................................18 
   5. Security Considerations.....................................19 
   6. Acknowledgments.............................................19 
   7. References..................................................19 
      7.1. Normative References...................................19 
      7.2. Informative References.................................20 
   Authors' Addresses.............................................21 
    
1. Introduction 

   This document intends to provide the architecture which allows a 
   node to receive multicast service via multicast when it is in the 

 
 
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   moving state.  Only receiver mobility scenario is considered, with 
   the intended service model of mobile IPTV applications.  The 
   multicast source mobility and network mobility are not within the 
   scope of this document. 

   The proposed scheme aims to be compatible with existing Mobile IP 
   and fixed network IP multicast protocols and tries to integrate them 
   efficiently to get a feasible solution.  Least restrictions should 
   be put on the underlying network, whose address family could be IPv4 
   or IPv6 and whose access network could be of any link types (3GPP, 
   WLAN or WIMAX). 

   The document is organized as: Section 2 gives the overview of mobile 
   receiver multicast.  Section 3 discusses various aspects of its 
   architecture and solution options.  Section 4 illustrates the 
   special considerations for different MIP protocols.  

2. Overview of Mobile Receiver Multicast 

   IP Multicast mobility provides multicast service delivery when the 
   network and/or terminals are in the moving state.  It enhances the 
   unicast mobile IP with multicast capability.  If multicast service 
   is not subscribed, the unicast mobile IP protocols should be used 
   for tracking and managing of the mobile host, thus MIP protocols 
   (MIPv4 [1], MIPv6 [2](or DSMIP [16]) and PMIPv6 [3],and etc.) should 
   be used in multicast mobility architecture to establish 
   communication relationships among the mobile node (MN), the 
   correspondent node (CN), and the access nodes on the home and 
   foreign network.  

   Receiver multicast mobility has the particularities that the 
   receiver doesn't send packets towards its CN counterpart - the 
   multicast source, and the multicast source does not send packets 
   directly to the receiver's address but to the multicast group 
   address instead, thus there isn't direct communication relationship 
   between the receiver and the multicast source and the binding 
   processing between them is not required.  Multicast receiver 
   mobility shares with the unicast application the common process for 
   MN and network discovery, address configuration, registration and 
   binding between the MN and the home network. 

   MIP makes use of tunnel for MN and CN to communicate through Home 
   Agent and of route optimization for them to communicate directly.  
   The tunnel mechanism has the efficiency and reliability problems and 
   the route optimization eliminates the drawback by introducing 
   additional signaling support between the CN and the MN.  For mobile 

 
 
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   multicast tunnel method [1][2], the home agent is responsible for 
   joining the multicast tree on behalf of the receiver.  The receiver 
   sends the group membership report through the tunnel to the home 
   agent and the home agent tunnels the group query and the multicast 
   data to the receiver.  It is obvious that the efficiency issue for 
   tunnel is even worse in multicast than in the unicast case because 
   multicast data is usually of high volume (such as video provision in 
   IPTV), which requires the optimal multicast route method (belonging 
   to ''remote subscription'' [17] categories) to be pursued. 

   The multicast route optimization should be based on the multicast 
   routing architecture.  The route optimization of receiver mobile 
   multicast is described as: the receiver sends group join to the 
   access node on the foreign network, and the access node directly 
   constructs the multicast tree on the foreign network, as mentioned 
   in [18][19][20][21][22]. 

   The adoption of multicast route optimization or the multicast tunnel 
   mechanism should be independent of the unicast communication 
   mechanism on the receiver, while it should depend on the capability 
   of and the policy configured on the receiver and the foreign access 
   network.  If the receiver node itself doesn't want to rely on the 
   foreign access node for multicast traffic forwarding, or current 
   foreign network does not support or configured not to use optimal 
   multicast routing, then tunnel mechanism could be adopted.  
   Otherwise if the access network is configured to use multicast route 
   optimization, then more efficient data delivery could be implemented. 

   Whether the multicast tree is constructed on the foreign network or  
   on the home network, the multicast routing mechanism should be the 
   same as that of fixed network multicast.  This is because they share 
   the common features that only the source sends data towards the 
   receiver and there isn't any multicast control packets exchanged 
   directly between the source and the receiver.  Thus it is feasible 
   to reuse currently deployed fixed network multicast routing 
   protocols.  The protocols could be PIM-SM [4], PIM-SSM [5], MPLS 
   p2mp RSVP-TE [6], MPLS p2mp LDP [23], and etc., depending upon the 
   provider's choices. 

   Handover issues must be considered carefully in mobile receiver 
   multicast solution, because as the receiver connects to the new 
   access network, the completion of configuration and establishment of 
   new multicast forwarding states may require long process time and 
   possibly interrupt the multicast data transmission.  Thus the 
   handover procedures should be optimized or accelerated to reduce or 
   avoid multicast packet loss. 

 
 
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   As a summary, the general architecture of multicast receiver 
   mobility can be described as follows: it makes use of MIP protocols 
   to make registration and binding of the receiver on the home network, 
   of IGMP/MLD protocols to join and leave a group, of multicast 
   routing protocols to construct multicast trees between the source 
   and the receiver on home or foreign network.  The tunnel and routing 
   optimization mechanism should both be provided.  Besides, special 
   consideration should be put on how to realize seamless multicast 
   reception during handover.  The extensions of the above protocols 
   and definition of a new protocol may be made if they are necessary 
   to improve the performance, and attention should be taken in order 
   not to introduce interoperability problems. 

3. Architecture Aspects of Mobile Receiver Multicast 

3.1. Network Entities 

   Regardless of the type of multicast routing protocols adopted, the 
   mobile multicast network includes the following entities: 

   - Multicast source.  It sends data to a multicast group with the 
   destination address of the packet set to multicast group address. 

   - First-hop router.  It connects directly with the multicast source 
   network. 

   - Last-hop router.  It connects directly with the multicast receiver 
   network and functions as the leaf node of the multicast tree.  It 
   receives and processes the group membership reports from the 
   receiver and initiates multicast routing protocol procedures towards 
   the upstream router to construct the multicast tree.  Sometimes the 
   switches and routers supporting IGMP/MLD-Proxy [7] also act as the 
   last hop, when the tree is set up simply by IGMP/MLD proxy messages. 

   - Intermediate router.  It constructs the multicast tree between the 
   first-hop and the last-hop by multicast routing protocol (or IGMP 
   proxy protocol). 

   - Root node. It is a Rendezvous Point (RP) node in some cases [4] 
   and is the first-hop router in other cases [5][6][23]. 

   For multicast receiver mobility, all the above entities are 
   stationary.  The last hop router is the leaf-node of the multicast 
   tree and may or may not coexist with network-side MIP access node 
   (defined in different MIP protocols as different entities as shown 
   below) which takes the duty of mobile management such as detection 

 
 
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   and configuration of the mobile receiver.  For convenience of 
   illustration, it is assumed in the following parts that the 
   multicast tree last-hop and the mobile IP access node are located on 
   the same node. 

   IPTV networks usually deploy video server on the edge of the network.  
   The multicast tree is constructed (sometimes statically) between the 
   server and the program source and the program content may be pre-
   pushed to the server.  The receiver connects to the server and after 
   the subscription downloads the content from the server.  In this 
   case the server is the last hop of the receiver. 

   The access node of the receiver on the home network is the home 
   agent in MIPv4 and (DS)MIPv6, or Local Mobility Anchor (LMA) in 
   PMIPv6.  For (DS)MIPv6 and MIPv4 of co-located mode, there is no 
   definite entity defined on the foreign network engaged in the MIP 
   signaling processing, then the access router on the foreign network 
   functions as the mobile multicast access node.  In other cases, the 
   foreign agent of MIPv4 (of foreign-agent mode) and Mobile Access 
   Gateway (MAG) of PMIPv6 is used.  For convenience of reference, this 
   document generally refers to these access nodes as mobile multicast 
   agent.  They are specifically referred to as Multicast Home Agent 
   (MHA) on the home network and Multicast Foreign Agent (MFA) on the 
   foreign network. 

3.2. Address Configuration and Registration Process 

   The receiver mobility multicast scheme has no restrictions on the 
   address types adopted by the mobile receiver and the access network.  
   They could be IPv4-only, IPv6-only or dual stack.  To use which type 
   of addresses depends on the policy of the provider or on the 
   customer's service profile. 

   If MIPv4 or (DS)MIPv6 is used, the mobile receiver uses home address 
   on home network and Care-of Address (CoA) on the foreign network.  
   The acquisition and configuration of the addresses and the binding 
   of them on the MHA should share the same procedures as those adopted 
   in the MIP protocols.  The CoA can be generated by MFA advertisement 
   or by external assignment method (such as DHCP [8][9] and etc.), 
   with more detailed explanation in [1][2].  After obtaining the CoA, 
   the receiver should register on the MHA to establish binding 
   relationship between its CoA and home address.  PMIPv6 has the 
   differences that the address configured on the foreign network is 
   home-network prefixed and registration binding operations of the 
   receiver take place between MFA and MHA not involving the MN. 


 
 
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   MIP protocols (MIPv4, MIPv6 or DSMIPv6, PMIPv6 and etc.) can be used 
   to implement the registration and binding.  The related registration 
   request and registration acknowledgment messages (Registration 
   Request and Registration Reply for MIPv4, Binding Update and Binding 
   Acknowledgement for (DS)MIPv6, and Proxy Binding Update and Proxy 
   Binding Acknowledgement for PMIPv6) could be transmitted via MFA or 
   directly between the receiver and the MHA, depending on different 
   MIP protocol adopted.  These messages can be extended to carry the 
   option or flag for mobile multicast capability negotiation as they 
   are transmitted. 

3.3. Tunnel Mechanism Considerations 

   In tunnel mechanism, the MHA will take the duty of group membership 
   management and multicast tree joining.  All the traffic will be sent 
   or received through the tunnel to or from the MHA. 

   When MIPv4 is used, the endpoints of the tunnel are the MHA and the 
   CoA of the receiver.  If the CoA is registered through the MFA, then 
   MFA terminates the tunnel, or if the CoA is registered directly with 
   the MHA (in the co-located mode), then the receiver itself 
   terminates the tunnel.  In other cases, the tunnel endpoints are 
   generally the MHA and the receiver for (DS)MIPv6, and are the MHA 
   and MFA for PMIPv6.  Thus for different MIP protocols, the endpoint 
   of the tunnel on the home network is the MHA, and the endpoint of 
   the tunnel on the foreign network can be either the MFA or the 
   receiver. 

   The tunnel could be statically created and deleted, or could be 
   established dynamically when needed.  The encapsulation type could 
   be IP-in-IP, GRE and minimal encapsulation as discussed in [1][2][3].  
   The address type of the outer and inner IP address could be of IPv4 
   or IPv6 according to the address type adopted by the receiver and 
   the provider network. 

3.4. Group Membership Management 

   The mobile receiver uses group management protocol IGMP (for IPv4) 
   [10][11] and MLD (for IPv6) [12][13] to join a multicast group, 
   which could be an ASM group or SSM group.  Among the various 
   versions of the protocol, IGMPv3, MLDv2, and their simplified 
   versions LW-IGMPv3 and LW-MLDv2 [24] are suggested to be used 
   because they support source-specific group join mode, which is 
   useful in efficient multicast provision.  Besides, the protocols 
   also provide the capability to implement explicit tracking (not 


 
 
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   available in their early versions), which helps improve fast leave 
   capability. 

   Normal IGMP or MLD procedure is used for receiver to send group 
   report and for mobile multicast agent to query the receiver.  For 
   tunnel mechanism, these reports and queries are sent through the 
   tunnel between the MHA and the MFA or between the MHA and the 
   receiver.  For multicast routing optimization, these messages will 
   be exchanged between the MFA and the receiver directly.  The IGMP 
   and MLD packet should be destined to link-local address and their 
   TTL field should be set to 1.  The setting of the destination 
   address of the query and report should follow the rules prescribed 
   in IGMP or MLD protocols.  

3.5. Multicast Tree Construction and Data Forwarding 

   If the receiver is on the home network, or it is on the foreign 
   network while using the tunnel mechanism, then MHA will engage in 
   the construction of the multicast tree.  The MHA exchanges multicast 
   routing packets with upstream intermediate multicast routers with 
   normal multicast routing procedures.  The multicast routing protocol 
   could be of any type mentioned in section 2. 

   After receiving the multicast data, if the receiver is on the home 
   network, the MHA will deliver them to the receiver directly.  If the 
   receiver is on the foreign network, the MHA will encapsulate them in 
   the tunnel and send them to the tunnel endpoint of the foreign 
   network, which may be MFA or receiver itself according to the kind 
   of the MIP protocol adopted.  In the former case, the MFA will de-
   capsulate the tunneled data and forward them to the receiver. 

   If the receiver is on the foreign network while using multicast 
   route optimization, then MFA will engage in the construction of the 
   multicast tree.  The MFA will exchange multicast routing packets 
   with upstream intermediate multicast routers on the foreign network.  
   After receiving the multicast data, the MFA will deliver them to the 
   receiver directly. 

   As the summary of the features illustrated above, an example of 
   multicast receiver mobility architecture is shown in figure 1.  The 
   lines between the blocks are bidirectional.  With the assumption 
   that MHA coexists with multicast Last hop, the multicast routing 
   protocol is running among multicast source, intermediate routers 
   (omitted in the figure), and MHA, MFA1, MFA2 and MFA3 entities.  
   IGMP/MLD message should be exchanged between the receivers and the 


 
 
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   multicast last hop (MHA and MFAs) and will be transmitted through 
   tunnel if tunnel mechanism is used. 

   Receivers R1, R2 and R3 use multicast tree constructed on home 
   network to forwarding multicast traffic.  They correspond 
   respectively to the cases when the receiver is on home network (MIP 
   registration is not required), when MIP registration takes place 
   directly between the receiver and the MHA (MIPv6, DSMIPv6 or Co-
   located MIPv4), and when MIP registration involves the MFA's 
   processing (PMIPv6 or Foreign-Agent-Advertised MIPv4).  R4 and R5 
   utilize optimal multicast routing with the multicast tree 
   constructed on foreign network through MFA2 and MFA3. The difference 
   between R4 and R5 cases lies in which kind of MIP protocol is 
   supported.  For R4 the MIP is running via MFA2 (PMIPv6 or Foreign-
   Agent-Advertised MIPv4) and for R5 MFA3 does not involve the MIP 
   signaling processing (MIPv6, DSMIPv6 or Co-located MIPv4).  The MIP 
   in brackets for R3 and R4 cases indicates that the MIP between the 
   receiver and the MFA is optionally supported, corresponding to 
   PMIPv6 (not supported) and Foreign-Agent mode MIPv4 (supported) 
   respectively. 

    

                     Multicast routing         
           +------+    protocol         +-----+ IGMP/MLD +----+
           |source| -------... -------- | MHA |----------| R1 |
           +------+                  /  +-----+ \        +----+
     multicast|    \multicast      /   /   |      \       
      routing :     :routing     /    /    |MIP&    \MIP&tunneled  
      protocol:      :protocol /MIP  /     |Tunneled  \IGMP/MLD
              |       \      /      /      |IGMP/MLD    \
           +----+      +----+      /    +-----+        +----+
           |MFA3|      |MFA2|     |     | MFA1|        | R2 |
           +----+      +----+     |     +-----+        +----+ 
             |           |        |        |            
     IGMP/MLD|   IGMP/MLD|(MIP)   |        |IGMP/MLD(MIP)
             |           |        |        |
           +----+      +----+     |      +----+  
           | R5 |      | R4 |     |      | R3 |
           +----+      +----+  MIP|      +----+
             |                    |    
             |--------------------| 

    

       Figure 1  Protocol Packets Exchanged in Multirem Architecture 

 
 
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   The multicast data forwarding flow is shown in figure 2.  R1 is on 
   home network thus is expected to receive native multicast data from 
   MHA, which is completely the same as that of the fixed network 
   multicasting.  For tunnel mechanism, the data is forwarded from 
   source to MHA and then to R2 or R3.  R2 uses (DS)MIPv6 or Co-located 
   mode MIPv4 for registration and R3 uses PMIPv6 or Foreign-Agent mode 
   MIPv4.  R4 receives multicast data with optimal multicast routing 
   regardless of the MIP protocols adopted. 

    

                 1)multicast data arrive 
                 from source to MHA via 
                 multicast tree constructed    2)From MHA
             +------+ on home network  +-----+  to R1   +----+
             |source|------//--------> | MHA | -------> | R1 |
             +------+                  +-----+          +----+
    6)multicast |                         |    \      
    data arrive :        4)through Tunnel |      \3) through tunnel  
    to MFA2 via |         from MHA to MFA1|        \ from MHA to R2
    tree on    \|/                       \|/        _\|
    foreign   +----+                   +-----+        +----+
    network   |MFA2|                   | MFA1|        | R2 |
              +----+                   +-----+        +----+ 
                |                         |            
     7)From MFA2|                         |
        to R4   |             5)From MFA1 | 
               \|/                 to R3 \|/
   	      +----+                     +----+  
              | R4 |                     | R3 |
              +----+                     +----+ 

    

                Figure 2 Multicast Data Forwarding Diagram 

                                      

3.6. Handover Considerations 

   The receiver could be in three states during handover.  Firstly the 
   receiver did not join any group and is not receiving any multicast 
   data, then the multicast process is not needed and unicast MIP is 

 
 
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   used to make tracking of the receiver.  Secondly, the receiver may 
   previously have not received from any group, but subscribes to a 
   group during the handover.  Because generally there is no real-time 
   requirement when the receiver initially makes group subscription, 
   the process should be the same with that without handover.  In the 
   last case, the receiver continues multicast receiving during 
   handover, which is much more prone to packet loss, because the 
   receiver needs to make connection to the new network, to undergo the 
   configuration, registration and binding of its new address, and to 
   wait the multicast delivery on the new network.  The above series of 
   processes require a specific period of time.  If the receiver fails 
   to keep the connection to the previous link before the new data path 
   is established, the packet loss will be inevitable.  This section 
   only discusses the third case about how to smooth the handover when 
   receiver is in the receiving state. 

   FMIP [14][15] improves the handover performance by shortening the 
   initial configuration time to accelerate handover process and by 
   establishing supplement data tunnel between the previous and new 
   access routers to reduce packet loss.  For multicast reception, a 
   similar process may also be needed because of the high-throughput 
   feature in multicast data transmission.  For example, the address 
   configuration delay could be reduced by advertising new network 
   address by previous MFA (pMFA) as described in FMIP protocol.  

3.6.1 Handover in Tunnel mechanism 

   The registration and binding process is initiated after the receiver 
   acquires its new address on the foreign network and thereafter the 
   multicast data should be delivered by the MHA to the new foreign 
   network quickly.  Because the MHA should have knowledge of multicast 
   reception state of the receiver on the new network to decide whether 
   to send traffic to the new network or not, the group membership 
   information on the new network needs to be delivered to the MHA as 
   soon as possible.   

   MIPv6 has the requirement that ''the mobile mode must not tunnel 
   group control packets until (1) the mobile node has a binding in 
   place at the home agent, and (2) the latter sends at least one 
   multicast group membership control packet via the tunnel'' [2].  If 
   this requirement is strictly followed in MIP protocols, the receiver 
   should wait for the registration acknowledgment and the group query 
   before sending its group report, which means the MHA after 
   registration immediately sends group query through the new tunnel.  
   To minimize the time consumed by this process, the group query of 
   the MHA could be bound together with the registration acknowledgment 

 
 
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   message with the latter extended to carry the information provided 
   by a query to the receiver.  The method has the advantage of 
   reduction of process time and number of packets. 

   If above requirement is not strictly followed and if the receiver is 
   permitted to send group report even before the completion of the 
   registration and the arriving of the query, it is also possible to 
   combine the group report with the registration request message to 
   shorten the multicast delivery.  In this case, the registration 
   request message could be extended to carry the necessary information 
   provided by the report to the MHA [21][22]. 

3.6.2 Handover in Route Optimization 

   For the routing optimization mechanism, after the registration, the 
   new MFA (nMFA) will take the duty of data forwarding based on the 
   optimal multicast routing on the foreign network.  If formerly there 
   isn't any multicast forwarding path on the nMFA for this group, the 
   latency introduced by the registration plus the construction of new 
   multicast tree branches could be considerable. 

   In different scenarios there may be different measures to shorten 
   this handover delay.  For example, if the MHA currently is just on 
   the multicast tree for this group, it can deliver the multicast 
   traffic to the MFA or the receiver immediately after the completion 
   of registration process, even if the new access network uses 
   multicast optimization.  After receiving the new optimal multicast 
   data, the reception from the tunneled data should be terminated.  
   This process is similar to the handover of tunnel mechanism and to 
   quicken this process, combination of the registration messages with 
   group query or report can also be adopted, as illustrated in section 
   3.6.1. 

   In some cases if the MFA is endowed with greater right, the new MFA 
   could join multicast tree immediately after connecting to the 
   receiver, not waiting for the registration acknowledgement of the 
   MHA.  If the multicast data arrives before the returning of the 
   registration acknowledgment, the MFA should buffer the traffic and 
   wait for the registration acknowledgement of MHA to trigger the 
   multicast forwarding. 

3.6.3 Hybrid Handover 

   There should be no limitation that a uniform mechanism must be taken 
   when the receiver is moving from an access network to another.  That 


 
 
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   is, the receiver could use tunnel and then use optimal multicast 
   routing to receive multicast traffic and vice versa.   

   During this hybrid network handover, if route optimization is 
   adopted in the new access network, the receiver takes the process of 
   registering on the MHA, sending group report towards the nMFA, and 
   receiving the new multicast data from the nMFA.  

   If tunnel mechanism is adopted in the new network, the receiver 
   should follow the procedures of registering and sending group 
   reporting on the MHA, receiving the multicast traffic from the new 
   tunnel.  The detailed process of both cases of hybrid handover 
   should be the same as those described in 3.6.1 and 3.6.2. 

3.6.4 FMIP Tunnel During Handover 

   FMIP [14][15] provides another measure to avoid or reduce packet 
   loss during handover.  Because the data is still available on the 
   previous MFA (pMFA) and the receiver is or will be connectable on 
   the new MFA (nMFA), the tunnel between these two MFAs can be used to 
   deliver data through the tunnel from the pMFA to the nMFA and then 
   to the receiver.   

   Here steps of predictive mode multicast FMIP are used to demonstrate 
   the process.  After the detection of the new network, the receiver 
   could solicit its nCoA and nMFA information through sending RtSolPr 
   to and receiving PrRtAdv from pMFA.  Then the receiver sends FBU 
   message to pMFA to request the multicast tunnel.  The pMFA and nMFA 
   exchange HI and HACK messages and after FBack sent by the pMFA the 
   multicast data is tunneled from the pMFA to the nMFA.  Finally the 
   receiver triggers the reception of the data from the nMFA by sending 
   UNA message. 

   FMIP is a transitional solution to optimizing handover process. It 
   does not engage in the registration of the mobile receiver and could 
   be deployed with all kinds of MIP protocols (i.e. MIPv4, MIPv6 or 
   DSMIPv6, PMIPv6 [25] and etc.) with multicast capability support.  
   It is possible that group membership information could be carried in 
   extended FMIP messages to trigger multicast reception through FMIP 
   tunnel as illustrated in [26]. 

3.6.5 Termination of Duplicate Multicast Traffic 

   In different handover scenarios mentioned in previous sections, the 
   receiver is possibly receiving at the same time from both the new 
   and previous network when it is connected to both links and possibly 

 
 
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   receives redundant traffic.  Normally at this time the old path 
   should be torn down as quickly as possible to reduce unnecessary 
   traffic. 

   It is possible to let the previous forwarding entity to wait for a 
   specific period of time before stopping the previous traffic.  But 
   sometimes this predetermined time interval might not meet the 
   complicated handover situations.  Further, if the previous and new 
   forwarders do not coexist (e.g. in optimal multicast routing 
   handover cases), it is impossible for the previous forwarder to know 
   the exact time when the new traffic arrives at the receiver. 

   One solution to this is to inform the previous forwarder the ceasing 
   of data delivery by some kind of control message.  Even though a new 
   message particular for this purpose could be defined, it is also 
   possible to make use of an IGMP/MLD group leave packet.  This 
   IGMP/MLD packet to terminate redundant multicast traffic is 
   different from the normal IGMP Leave or MLD Done message for their 
   purpose is to inform the end of redundant traffic rather than to de-
   subscribe from the group.  If it is possible, the source address of 
   this IGMP/MLD control packet could be set to the receiver's previous 
   network address to distinguish it from a normal group de-
   subscription leave packet.  On receiving this control message, the 
   previous forwarding entity should stop forwarding multicast traffic 
   and possibly take other procedures such as pruning from the 
   multicast tree if there is no other multicast receiver attached to 
   its link. 

3.6.6 Moving Back and Forth during Handover 

   When a receiver is moving back and forth during handover, it may 
   connect an access node then disconnect it, or may disconnect and 
   then reconnect it, described as ''ping-pong mobility'' in [18].  For 
   the latter case, when the disconnection occurs, the access node may 
   prune the multicast forwarding path.  If after a while, when the 
   receiver moves back and reconnects to the access node, the multicast 
   forwarding path has to be re-established, with additional signaling 
   delay.   

   To overcome this shortcoming, the access nodes during handover could 
   choose to preserve for a specified period of time the forwarding and 
   other related states for the receiver even though the receiver is 
   out of reach.  If within this time interval the receiver moves back 
   into the access node's range, the multicast data could be delivered 
   to the receiver quickly.  For tunnel mechanism, the forwarding 
   states should be preserved by the MHA and for route optimization 

 
 
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   they should be preserved by MFA.  This measure can be used to 
   improve the multicast handover performance but can be deployed by 
   both the unicast and multicast applications. 

3.7. Authentication and Accounting 

   The authentication is used to check the validity of the message 
   originator in multicast mobility architecture.  The authentication 
   can be carried out anytime and anywhere and on any entities 
   depending on the policy deployed by the network providers.  The 
   provider according to the trust level of the entities determines 
   what kind of security mechanism should be put on these entities when 
   they exchange their messages.  The authentication probably happens 
   when a receiver initially connects to the access nodes of home or 
   foreign network, when the receiver registering its binding on its 
   MHA, when the receiver registers on its MFA, or when the pMFA and 
   nMFA decide to use the tunnel for fast handover.  There should be no 
   restrictions on the authentication mechanism adopted.  They could be 
   taken by other protocols or could be carried in the messages within 
   multicast mobility architecture, which are not discussed in this 
   document. 

   The accounting of multicast receiver could be implemented out-band 
   of multicast data transfer.  The MHA and MFA as the direct data 
   forwarder to the receiver could take the duty of collecting 
   accounting data and could send them actively to the accounting 
   server or other network entities, or passively in response of the 
   queries.  The implementation methods should depend on the deployment 
   policy of the provider and are not discussed within this document. 

4. Considerations for Different MIP Protocols 

4.1. MIPv4 

   MIPv4 defines two different communication modes according to whether 
   the CoA is assigned by the foreign agent or by other external 
   mechanism.  They are discussed in section 4.1.1 and 4.1.2. 

4.1.1 When CoA advertised by foreign agent 

   In this mode an entity of foreign agent involves in the MIPv4 
   signaling procedures and it should be the MFA in multicast receiver 
   mobility architecture. 

   The receiver takes normal fixed-network multicast procedures on home 
   network.  On foreign network, after the receiver obtains its CoA, it 

 
 
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   registers through the MFA the binding of this CoA on MHA by MIPv4 
   signaling.  If tunneling is used, the MFA encapsulates the 
   receiver's IGMP report and tunnels it to the MHA and the MHA queries 
   periodically the group membership of the receiver through the tunnel 
   to the MFA.  The MHA on receiving the report joins the multicast 
   tree on the home network and after receiving the multicast data 
   sends them through the tunnel towards the MFA.  The MFA decapsulates 
   the queries and the multicast data and forwards them to the receiver. 

   The endpoints of the tunnel are MHA and MFA, with outer layer 
   addresses set to the interface addresses of the MHA and the home 
   address of the receiver.  The inner sources of the report and query 
   should be respectively the home address of the receiver and 
   interface address of MHA.  The inner destination address of the 
   report and query should be set as the IGMP protocols describe. 

   If optimal multicast is used, the IGMP group reports will be 
   processed and IGMP queries will be sent by the MFA (if it is the 
   last-hop), which will join the multicast tree on the foreign network.  
   After receiving the multicast data, the MFA forwards them to the 
   receiver. 

   The receiver and the MFAs can use IPv4 version of FMIP [14] and its 
   extension to facilitate the fast handover, as described in section 
   3.6.4. 

4.1.2 Co-located CoA 

   In this mode the receiver and the home agent communicate directly 
   and there is no such an entity as the foreign agent.  Thus the 
   access node on the foreign network is regarded as the MFA in the 
   multicast mobility. 

   The co-located CoA is configured by other external mechanism such as 
   DHCP.  The registration of this CoA is directly between the receiver 
   and the MHA by MIPv4 signaling.  For tunnel mechanism, after the 
   registration and binding, if the receiver wants to subscribe a 
   multicast group, it sends the IGMP report directly to the MHA 
   through the tunnel to the MHA.  The MHA joins the multicast tree on 
   the home network and after receiving the multicast data, tunnels 
   them directly to the receiver. 

   The endpoints of the tunnel are MHA and the receiver, with outer 
   layer addresses set to the interface addresses of the MHA and the 
   CoA of the receiver.  The inner source of the report and query 
   should be the home address of the receiver and interface address of 

 
 
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   MHA. The inner destination address of the report and query should be 
   set as the IGMP protocols describe. 

   If optimal multicast route is used, the access node on the foreign 
   network should act as MFA and should be engaged in the multicast 
   tree construction on the foreign network.  This access node after 
   receiving the multicast data, will deliver them to the receiver.  
   The receiver should use its CoA when communicating with its MFA if 
   MFA is ignorant of the receiver's home address.  In this case the 
   address setting rule should be the same as that of fixed network 
   multicast. 

   The receiver and the MFAs can use IPv4 version of FMIP [14] and its 
   extension to facilitate the fast handover, as described in section 
   3.6.4. 

4.2. MIPv6 and DSMIPv6 

   MIPv6 resembles the co-located mode of MIPv4 for the receiver 
   communicates directly with the home agent without the signaling 
   participation of the access node on the foreign network, as 
   described in section 4.1.2.  The receiver use traditional IPv6 
   address configuration method (stateless or stateful) to obtain the 
   CoA address on foreign network and use MIPv6 signaling to make the 
   registration and binding between the CoA and home address on the 
   home agent.  Both tunnel and optimal multicast routing can be used 
   and the address setting method for group membership message and 
   multicast data should follow the principles given in MIPv6 and MLD 
   protocols. 

   FMIPv6 [15] is used and may be extended implementing multicast fast 
   handovers as illustrated in section 3.6.4. 

   DSMIPv6 supplements MIPv6 with accessing of IPv4 public and private 
   foreign networks besides the IPv6 one.  The basic communication 
   mechanism is the same as that of MIPv6.  For DSMIPv6 the binding of 
   home and CoA addresses are established for both IPv6 and IPv4 types 
   and the tunnel should be set according to the types of access 
   network.  In tunnel mechanism, the inner group membership management 
   should use MLD protocol.  The address setting of tunneled packet 
   should follow the rules given by DSMIPv6 and MLD protocols. 

   If optimal multicast routing is used, the receiver after 
   registration sends group report to MFA.  It is reasonable that MLD 
   will be used on IPv6 foreign network and IGMP shall be used on IPv4 
   network between the receiver and the MFA.  

 
 
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   If the handover takes place between IPv6 foreign networks then is 
   FMIPv6 [15] or its extension should be used for multicast fast 
   handover.  While for IPv4 networks the FMIPv4 [14] could be used. 

4.3. PMIPv6 

   In PMIPv6, the receiver itself does not engage in the PMIP signaling 
   and LMA and MAG are respectively the MHA and the MFA counterparts in 
   the receiver mobile multicast.  Besides, there is no permanent home 
   address and the receiver's address obtained on the foreign network 
   is home-network prefixed.  The MAG has a proxy CoA address to 
   communicate by bidirectional tunnel with the LMA. The receiver 
   obtains its CoA at the current point of attachment and then the MAG 
   will register the binding relationship for it on the LMA by PMIP 
   signaling.  Even if PMIP only defines tunnel mechanism, it is also 
   possible to use multicast route optimization. 

   In tunnel mechanism, if the receiver wants to join a multicast group, 
   it sends group report towards MAG and the MAG will encapsulate the 
   MLD report and tunnel it to the LMA.  The LMA queries the receiver 
   through the tunnel from LMA to MAG and LMA initiates the tree join 
   operation.  After receiving the multicast data, the LMA tunnels them 
   to the MAG and MAG will decapsulate and forward them to the receiver. 

   The outer layer addresses of tunneled packet should be set to the 
   Proxy-CoA of MAG and the  interface address of LMA.  When the 
   receiver sends the MLD report, its source address should be set to 
   the home-network prefixed address of the receiver.  The source 
   address of the query should be the address of the LMA.  The 
   destination addresses of the report and the query are set according 
   to MLD protocols. 

   If optimal multicast routing is used, the MAG after receiving the 
   group report will initiate the multicast tree construction on the 
   foreign network.  After receiving the multicast data, the MAG will 
   deliver them to the receiver.  The receiver uses home-linked address 
   when communicating with the MAG.  The address setting rule for MLD 
   messages and the multicast data should be the same as that of fixed-
   network multicast. 

   Fast handover for PMIPv6 (e.g FPMIPv6 [25]) or its extension can be 
   used to reduce possible multicast data loss during handover.  





 
 
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5. Security Considerations 

   The security mechanism particular for MultiRem will be considered in 
   the later version of the draft. 

6. Acknowledgments 

   The author appreciates multimob mail list participants for their 
   contributions to this document.  Special thanks should be given to 
   Behcet Sarikaya for his valuable comments for it. 

7. References 

7.1. Normative References 

   [1] Perkins, C., Ed., "IP Mobility Support for IPv4", RFC 3344, 
   August 2002. 

   [2] Johnson, D., Perkins, C., and J. Arkko, "Mobility Support in 
   IPv6", RFC 3775, June 2004. 

   [3] Gundavelli, S, Ed., Leung, K., Devarapalli, V., Chowdhury, K., 
   and B. Patil, "Proxy Mobile IPv6", RFC 5213, August 2008. 

   [4] Fenner, B., Handley, M., Holbrook, H., and I. Kouvelas, 
   "Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode (PIM-SM): Protocol 
   Specification (Revised)", RFC 4601, August 2006. 

   [5] Holbrook, H. and B. Cain, "Source-Specific Multicast for IP", 
   RFC 4607, August 2006. 

   [6] R. Aggarwal, D. Papadimitriou, S. Yasukawa, et. al., "Extensions 
   to RSVP-TE for Point-to-Multipoint TE LSPs", RFC 4875, May 2007. 

   [7] Fenner, B., He, H., Haberman, B., and H. Sandick, "Internet 
   Group Management Protocol (IGMP) / Multicast Listener Discovery 
   (MLD)-Based Multicast Forwarding ("IGMP/MLD Proxying")", RFC4605, 
   August 2006. 

   [8] Droms, R., "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol", RFC 2131, 
   March 1997. 

   [9] Droms, R., Ed., Bound, J., Volz, B., Lemon, T., Perkins, C. and 
   M. Carney, "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6 (DHCPv6)", 
   RFC 3315, July 2003. 


 
 
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   [10] Fenner, W., "Internet Group Management Protocol, Version 2", 
   RFC 2236, November 1997. 

   [11] Cain, B., Deering, S., Kouvelas, I., Fenner, B., and A. 
   Thyagarajan, "Internet Group Management Protocol, Version 3", RFC 
   3376, October 2002 

   [12] Deering, S., Fenner, W. and B. Haberman, "Multicast Listener 
   Discovery (MLD) for IPv6", RFC 2710, October 1999. 

   [13] Vida, R. and L. Costa, "Multicast Listener Discovery Version 
   2(MLDv2) for IPv6", RFC 3810, June 2004. 

   [14] R. Koodli and C. Perkins, " Mobile IPv4 Fast Handovers", RFC 
   4988, October 2007 

   [15] R. Koodli, "Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6", RFC 5268, October 
   2007. 

7.2. Informative References 

   [16] H. Soliman, "Mobile IPv6 Support for Dual Stack Hosts and 
   Routers", draft-ietf-mext-nemo-v4traversal-10.txt, April 7, 2009 

   [17] Romdhani, I., Kellil, M., and H. Lach, "IP Mobile Multicast: 
   Challenges and Solutions", IEEE Comm. Surveys 6(1), 2004. 

   [18] Deng, H., Schmidt, T., Seite, P., and P. Yang, "Multicast         
   Support Requirements for Proxy Mobile IPv6", draft-deng-multimob-
   pmip6-requirement-00.txt (work in progress), November 2007. 

   [19] F. Xia, B. Sarikaya, "Hybrid Subscription for Multicast 
   Reciever Mobility in MIPv6", draft-xia-multimob-hybrid-00.txt (work 
   in progress), November 2007 

   [20] Hong-ke Zhang, Jian-feng Guan, Hua-chun Zhou, Ying Zhu, 
   "Multicast Routing in Proxy Mobile IPv6", draft-zhang-netlmm-pmipv6-
   mcast-00.txt(work in progress), September 2008 

   [21] H. Asaeda, P. Seite, J. Xia, "PMIPv6 Extensions for Multicast", 
   draft-asaeda-multimob-pmip6-extension-00(work in progress), October 
   2008 

   [22] Y. K. Zhao and P. Seite, "The Solution for Pmipv6 Multicast 
   Service", draft-zhao-multimob-pmip6-solution-02.txt, October 2008 


 
 
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   [23] I. Minei, K., Kompella, I. Wijnands, and B. Thomas, "Label 
   Distribution Protocol Extensions for Point-to-Multipoint and 
   Multipoint-to-Multipoint Label Switched Paths", draft-ietf-mpls-ldp-
   p2mp-05.txt, May 2008. 

   [24] Liu, H., Cao, W., and H. Asaeda, "Lightweight IGMPv3 and MLDv2 
   Protocols", draft-ietf-mboned-lightweight-igmpv3-mldv2-03.txt (work 
   in progress), June 2008 

   [25] H. Yokota, K. Chowdhury, B. Patil, F. Xia, " Fast Handovers for 
   Proxy Mobile IPv6", draft-ietf-mipshop-pfmipv6-04.txt (work in 
   progress), May 2009 

   [26] Xia, F. and B. Sarikaya, "FMIPv6 extension for Multicast 
   Handover", draft-xia-mipshop-fmip-multicast-01 (work in progress), 
   March 2007  

Authors' Addresses 

   Hui Liu 
   Huawei Technologies Co.,Ltd 
   KuiKe Building, No.9 Xinxi Rd., 
   Hai-Dian District  
   Beijing, 100085 
   P.R. China 
      
   Email: liuhui47967@huawei.com 



















 
 
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