Subject: WG Action: Mobility for IPv6 (mip6)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 15:32:29 -0400

A new IETF working group has been formed in the Internet Area.
For additional information, please contact the Area Directors or the Chairs.

Mobility for IPv6 (mip6)
------------------------

Current Status: Active Working Group 

Chair(s):

Basavaraj Patil <[email-masked]>
Goral Dommety <[email-masked]>

Internet Area Director(s):

Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>

Internet Area Advisor:

Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>

Mailing Lists:

General Discussion: [email-masked]
To Subscribe: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mip6
Archive: http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/mip6/current/

Description of Working Group:

Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) specifies routing support to permit an IPv6 host to
continue using its "permanent" home address as it moves around
the Internet. Mobile IPv6 supports transparency above the IP
layer, including maintenance of active TCP connections and UDP port
bindings. The specifications for these mechanisms consist of:

        draft-ietf-mobileip-ipv6-24 (RFC XXX) and
        draft-ietf-mobileip-mipv6-ha-ipsec-06 (RFC XXX)

The protocol as specified in the above two documents can be considered
as  the baseline or minimum protocol set for implementing IPv6
mobility. During the development phase of the base protocol, a few
additional features were identified as necessary to facilitate
deployment (described below).

The primary goal of the MIP6 working group will be to enhance base
IPv6 mobility by continuing work on developments that are required for
wide-scale deployments. Additionally the working group will ensure
that any issues identified by the interop testing of the MIPv6
specifications are addressed quickly. Specific work items with this
goal in mind are listed below:

1) Create and maintain an issue list that is generated on the basis of
  interop testing and address these issues as enhancements to the
  base protocol

2) Features such as renumbering of the home link, home agent discovery,
  Route Optimization, which are currently a part of the base
  specification can be specified more explicitly as separate
  specifications. This will also enable modularizing the Mobile
  IPv6 specification further into the minimal subset and add-on
  features. Some of these specifications will be identified as
  base mechanisms of Mobile IPv6.

3) A number of enhancements to basic IPv6 mobility were identified
  during the development of the base specification. These
  enhancements will be taken up in a phased manner depending on the
  priority identified with each. Below are listed the work items to
  be taken up by the WG:

      - A bootstrap mechanism for setting up security associations
        between the Mobile Node (MN) and Home Agent (HA) that would
        enable easier deployment of Mobile IPv6. This bootstrap
        mechanism is intended to be used when the device is turned on
        the very first time and activates MIPv6. The WG should
        investigate and define the scope before solving the problem.

    - Improving home agent reliability: in the event of a home agent
      crashing, this would allow another home agent to continue
      providing service to a given mobile node.

    - Support for a Mobile Node changing its home address, either
      because of renumbering in its home network or because it
      periodically changes addresses (perhaps via RFC3041)

    - Route optimization will require security mechanisms for
      trusting and updating the binding information.Return-routability
      is the basic mechanism for route-optimization. Mechanisms using
      a shared secret Key/Security Association will be considered.
      Methods for establishing a security association between the
      mobile node and the correspondent node are out of the scope 
      of the WG.

    - The working group will also document problem statements
      associated with deploying Mobile IPv6 in the following areas:
        a. Mobile IPv6 issues in the presence of firewalls
        b. Mobile IPv6 deployment and transition issues in the        
            presence of IPv4/IPv6 networks
        c. Multicast issues

It should be noted that there are potential optimizations that might
make mobile IP more attractive for use by certain applications (e.g.,
making handovers "faster"). The latter category of optimizations is
explicitly out-of-scope at this time; this WG will focus on issues
for which there is strong consensus that the work is needed to get
basic mobility deployable on a large scale.

Goals and Milestones:

  Nov 03 Problem statement documents (to IESG)
           - Issues with firewall
           - Mobile IPv6 transition between v4/v6 networks

  Jan 03 Bootstrapping problem statement to IESG

  Feb 04 Submit MIPv6 MIB to IESG

  Mar 04 Alternate Route Optimization scheme to IESG

  May 04 Home agent reliability to IESG

  Aug 04 Bootstrapping solution to IESG

  Nov 04 Separate specs for Home Agent (HA) Discovery, Route Optimization,
         Renumbering to IESG