Design of efficient protocol for location privacy in mobile IPv6

Abstract

Internet Protocol routes packets to their destination according to IP addresses which are associated with a fixed network. So, when the packet``s destination is a mobile node, this means that each new point of access made by the node is associated with a new network number, hence, new IP address must be set to maintain connections as the Mobile Node (MN) moves from place to place. This makes transparent mobility impossible, which prompted the development of Mobile IP (MIP) protocol. MIP enables the MN to move around without loosing their transport-layer connectivity by using resources in the foreign domain network. MIP is currently a hot research area and expected to be the core infrastructure of future mobile communication. However, a certain level of security services must be provided before the wide deployment of MIP. Security services, such as authentication and access control of the MN, have been considered since the birth of MIP. But little attention has been given to location privacy service, i.e. preventing the tracing of mobile user``s point of attachment to the network, despite of their increased significance in wireless network. The disclosure of a MN``s location and identity allows unauthorized entities to track down his moving history, which can be a serious violation of privacy. During the past years a variety of theoretical concepts for location privacy have been proposed and implemented. But most of them are not suitable for MIP communication because they assume a device with strong computational power, which is not true to mobile device, and they don``t guarantee real time communication. Some of them satisfy above constraints, but provide weaker level of security. Hence, existing concepts can``t be employed without modification or security analysis. Until now, no practical solution was suggested for location information protection in MIP. So, in this thesis, we identify required level of location privacy, and propose an efficient protocol...