Hi Ajay / All,
I have a procedural
question about 802.21 PAR. Please
clarify if I missed something
as I was not part of PAR
discussion. I asked this question
during L3 conference call today,
but we could not complete
the discussion. I am just
wondering if current 802.21 PAR allows
us to develop a L3
protocol or influence development of L3
mobility management protocol in IETF.
Based upon my
understanding of PAR, 802.21 is going to
define mechanisms that would
facilitate existing
higher layer protocol such as Mobile / IP etc. to optimize layer 3
handoff. Please see
below a quote from PAR (Five Criteria doc):
" This
standard shall facilitate
optimization of Mobile IP handover, however this does not preclude the
standard
from being
used to optimize handovers of
other layer 3 protocols. "
I would appreciate if you
point me to appropriate sections
of PAR that enable us to influence the design of
higher layer protocol as
part of 802.21 activity. It is
likely that I missed something here as I was not involved in
original PAR discussion.
Also, see below a text from
(Five Criteria Doc) that I think was used to justify the
PAR of current 802.21
work:
" Handover
is a common mechanism, present in many systems such as cellular systems
or
802.11 ESSs. Mobile IP,
in
both v4 and v6
forms, has shown that roaming across heterogeneous systems is possible.
Work in
the IETF SEAMOBY,
TRIGTRAN,
CAPWAP/LWAPP
projects has highlighted the need for greater interaction between 802
MAC and
PHY
layers
and a roaming
layer 3 in order to coordinate smoother, faster handovers. Accordingly
it is
clear that roaming within
the
confines of
different 802 technologies is feasible and that approaches that might
be
adopted for roaming at higher
layers
are feasible.
Since the IETF has published in draft form, a role that 802 networks
can play
in higher layer (above the LLC)
handover
it is clear
that it is possible to incorporate such mechanisms into the 802
framework.
The
proven ability to
handover within 802.11 networks, within cellular networks and within IP
networks has proved a minimum
set
of capabilities
for mobile technologies. The nature of message passing protocols is
such that
the timing and passage of the
messages
is subject to
observation and testing. Methods of testing interruptions to
established
sessions while being handed over are well established in telephony and
data
networking practices.
Neither
security
algorithms nor security protocols shall be defined in the
specification. This
does not preclude the propagation
of
authentication or
authorization information to support network detection and selection.
This
standard will provide services both
across an 802 link and to upper layers to
*
Facilitate
the optimization of detection and selection of networks
*
Provide
a source of extensible and semantically defined information to
facilitate
optimized handover decision making
*
Provide
a mechanism to access this information over an 802 link.
*
Provide
triggers to upper layers
So, should 't we be
defining mechanisms that would
enable the deployment
of existing IETF
protocols rather than trying to influence their
design? I guess IETF is anyway working to
standardize various
building blocks of Mobility Management
protocols. Anyway if we really
want to influence IETF
mobility management protocol design,
perhaps we should modify
PAR to indicate this.
Regards,
Ajoy