Practical solution for location privacy in mobile IPv6

Abstract

Mobile IP (MIP) enables the Mobile Node (MN) to move around without loosing their transport-layer connectivity by using resources in the foreign domain network. MIP is expected to be the core infrastructure of future mobile communication, but certain level of security services must be provided before the wide deployment of MIP. Security services, such as authentication and access control, have been considered since the birth of MIP, but little attention has been given to location privacy services despite of their increased significance in wireless network. MIPv6 uses IPSec to provide data confidentiality and authentication between Home Agent (HA) and the Mobile Node (MN). However, no practical solution was suggested for location information protection in MIP. During the past years a variety of theoretical concepts for location privacy have been proposed, but most of them are not applicable to MIP communication. So, in this paper, we identify required level of location privacy, and propose new protocol for providing the identified level of location privacy.