Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6

Mobile IPv6 enables a Mobile Node to maintain its connectivity to the Internet when moving from one Access Router to another, a process referred to as handover.During handover, there is a period during which the Mobile Node is unable to send or receive packets because of link switching delay and IP protocol operations.This "handover latency" resulting from standard Mobile IPv6 procedures, namely movement detection, new Care of Address configuration, and Binding Update, is often unacceptable to real-time traffic such as Voice over IP.Reducing the handover latency could be beneficial to non-realtime, throughput-sensitive applications as well.This document specifies a protocol to improve handover latency due to Mobile IPv6 procedures.This document does not address improving the link switching latency.