Q15Mobile Computing
Question
Explain the working mechanism of Mobile IP with a suitable example.
Answer
Mobile IP uses a Home Agent, Foreign Agent, and Care-of Address to route packets to a mobile node currently in a foreign network.
Mobile IP allows a Mobile Node (MN) to keep its home IP address regardless of its physical location. For example, consider an MN with a home network managed by a Home Agent (HA). When the MN moves to a foreign network, it discovers a Foreign Agent (FA) and acquires a temporary Care-of Address (COA). The MN registers this COA with its HA. Now, when a Correspondent Node (CN) sends a packet to the MN's home address, the packet arrives at the home network and is intercepted by the HA. The HA encapsulates the packet and tunnels it to the COA. The FA (or the MN itself if it has a co-located COA) decapsulates the packet and delivers the original payload to the MN.