Mobile director

Abstract

Methods and apparatus for processing registration requests by a Home Agent supporting Mobile IP are disclosed. A registration request is received from each of a plurality of Mobile Nodes, the registration request specifying a care-of address, which may be allocated by the Foreign Agent. A binding is established between each of the plurality of Mobile Nodes and the associated care-of address, each of the plurality of Mobile Nodes being associated with one another. For instance, the plurality of Mobile Nodes may be statically or dynamically assigned the same Home Address. A tunnel is then created between the Home Agent and the care-of address for each of the plurality of Mobile Nodes, thereby enabling a server request to be distributed by the Home Agent to one of the plurality of Mobile Nodes or to a cluster of Mobile Nodes (e.g., associated with the care-of address) via the associated tunnel. For instance, a server request addressed to the Home Address may be forwarded directly to one of the Mobile Nodes assigned that Home Address. Alternatively, when an address such as the care-of address is associated with multiple Mobile Nodes, the Foreign Agent may perform a second level of dispatching such that the server request is dispatched to one of the Mobile Nodes in the cluster.