A general simulation environment for IP mobility

Abstract

This paper describes an advanced simulation environment that has been used to examine, validate, and predict the performance of Protocols for IP Mobility Support. It overcomes many limitations found in existing network simulators, and it provides more support on mobile-related issues. It contains several components that are common to all evaluations of IP mobility, which can model arbitrary network-topologies, arbitrary movement pattern, and arbitrary calling patterns. It also provides a set of protocol implementations that are necessary to simulating the Internet. The environment offers several desirable features including: 1) flexible metrics collection for both predefined and customized ones, 2) reuse of calling patterns, moving patterns, network topologies, etc. and 3) automatic generation of mobility pattern. Several research contributions had been made with the help of this simulation environment, and it would be useful for refining various aspects of IP mobility support.