Performance optimization of multicast content delivery in a mobile environment based on PMIPv6

Recently, a base solution has been adopted for supporting multicast listener mobility in Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6). This solution brings multicast listener support into PMIPv6 by placing multicast routing functions at LMA while MAGs provide MLD proxy functions. Nevertheless, it does not address specific optimizations and performances issues such as handover latency, tunnel overhead, non-route optimization, etc. Specially, this paper focuses on handover performance in terms of service disruption time. The theoretical and simulation results show that through the utilization of multicast context transfer the service disruption time can be reduced significantly. By tuning the behavior of the IGMP/MLD for routers, we can also achieve a similar result, but make a dramatically increasing multicast-signaling. Thus, the impact of multicast-related signaling on the wireless link is studied to suggest the maximum number of listeners supported by one MAG. An enhanced multicast context transfer function is also proposed for group multicast mobility to reduce the number of signaling messages.