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Distributed Mobility Management (dmm)

WG Name Distributed Mobility Management
Acronym dmm
Area Internet Area (int)
State Active
Charter charter-ietf-dmm-02 Approved
Document dependencies
Additional resources Issue tracker, Wiki, Zulip stream
Personnel Chairs Satoru Matsushima, Sri Gundavelli
Area Director Erik Kline
Mailing list Address dmm@ietf.org
To subscribe https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dmm
Archive https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/dmm/
Chat Room address https://zulip.ietf.org/#narrow/stream/dmm

Charter for Working Group

Mobility management solutions lie at the center of the wireless Internet
and enable mobile devices to partake in IP networks anytime and
anywhere. The IETF Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) working group
(WG) specifies solutions for IP networks so that traffic between mobile
and correspondent nodes can take an optimal route. DMM solutions aim for
transparency above the IP layer, including maintenance of active
transport level sessions when mobile hosts or mobile networks change
their point of attachment to the Internet.

Wireless network deployments have traditionally relied on hierarchical
schemes that often lead to centralized deployment models, where a small
number of mobility anchors manage both mobility and reachability for a
mobile node. The DMM WG will consider the latest developments in mobile
networking research and operational practice (i.e. flattening network
architectures, the impact of virtualization, new deployment needs as
wireless access technologies evolve in the coming years) and will
describe how distributed mobility management addresses the new needs in
this area better than previously standardized solutions.

A topic of particular focus will be mobility anchoring in this new
context, and the DMM working group is chartered to work on
maintenance-oriented extensions of the Mobile IPv6 protocol family (RFC
5213, RFC 5844, RFC 5555, RFC 5568, and RFC 6275) as well as new
approaches which capitalize on other protocols specified by the IETF.
For example, mobility management in a limited area, such as within an
autonomous system, is not strictly limited to mentioned IP mobility
protocols but can be any existing or a new protocol solution enabling
the movement of a mobile node such as routing protocols. When extending
protocols that are not based on Mobile IP, DMM solutions will have to be
reviewed by the corresponding WGs.

IPv6 is assumed to be present in both the mobile host/router and the
access networks. DMM solutions are primarily targeted at IPv6
deployments and are not required to support IPv4, in particular for the
case where private IPv4 addresses and/or NATs are used. DMM solutions
must maintain backward compatibility: If the network or the mobile
host/router does not support the distributed mobility management
protocol that should not prevent the mobile host/router gaining basic
access (i.e., nomadic) to the network.

Contrary to earlier IP mobility protocols, mobility management signaling
paths and end-user traffic forwarding paths may differ. Further,
mobility-related functions may be located in separate network nodes. DMM
solutions should not distinguish between physical or virtualized
networking functions. Whenever applicable, clarifications and additional
features/capabilities for specific networking function deployment
models, e.g. in virtualized environments, are in-scope and encouraged.
Solutions may also specify the selection between the care-of addresses
and home address(es)/prefix(es) for different application use cases.

The working group will produce one or more documents on the following
work item topics.

  o Distributed mobility management deployment models and scenarios:
    describe the target high-level network architectures and
    deployment models where distributed mobility management
    protocol solutions would apply.

  o Enhanced mobility anchoring: define protocol solutions for a
    gateway and mobility anchor assignment and mid-session mobility
    anchor switching that go beyond what has been specified, for
    example, in RFC 6097, 6463, and 5142. Traffic steering
    associated with the anchor switch is also in-scope if deemed
    appropriate.

  o Forwarding path and signaling management: the function
    that handles mobility management signaling interacts with the
    DMM network elements for managing the forwarding state
    associated with a mobile node's IP traffic.  These two functions
    may or may not be collocated. Furthermore, the forwarding state
    may also be distributed into multiple network elements instead
    of a single network element (e.g., anchor).  Protocol extensions
    or new protocols will be specified to allow the above mentioned
    forwarding path and signalling management.

  o Exposing mobility state to mobile nodes and network nodes:
    define solutions that allow, for example, mobile nodes to select
    either a care-of address or a home address depending on an
    application' mobility needs. In order to enable this
    functionality, the network-side control functions and other
    networking nodes must also be able to exchange appropriate
    control information, as well as to the mobile nodes and their
    applications.

The working group may decide to extend the current milestones based on
the new information and knowledge gained during working on other
documents listed in the initial milestones. Possible new documents and
milestones must still fit into the overall DMM charter scope as outlined
above.

Milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Mar 2017 RFC5149bis submitted to IESG.
Nov 2016 RFC5149bis on Service Selection as a working group document
Feb 2016 Submit 'Exposing mobility state to mobile nodes and network nodes' submitted to the IESG.

Done milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Done Submit 'Exposing mobility state to mobile nodes and network nodes' as a working group document(s).
Done Submit 'RFC4283bis on MN-IDs as a working group document'.
Done Submit 'Enhanced mobility anchoring' as a working group document.
Done Submit 'Forwarding path and signaling management' as a working group document.