Wireless – the next generation

Many observers suggest that the next generation wireless networks (NGWNs) will see the convergence of all the different wireless technologies, from 3G and 4g cellular networks, WiMAX, LTE and other protocols and somehow these systems will have to remain interoperable with the traditional IP-based wired networks that underpin telecommunications of all flavors. The advent of NGWNs will mean that the nodes in a given network will suddenly be mobile where they were essentially fixed geographically.
 
Mobility might mean disconnectivity unless the issues of wireless data transmission, signal strength and interference can be circumvented. Mobility also brings with it the problem of place privacy. To remain connected to a network, the wireless connection device will more often than not need to reveal its exact location to the correspondents. For some applications video, TV broadcasting, online games that might not be a problem but for voice and data and medical applications place privacy could be critical.
Place privacy probed

 “Current networking protocols designed around single interface stationary end-systems clearly fail to represent the present communication context of mobile, multi-interface end-systems.”
In other words, all these different gadgets and computers are not good at talking nicely to each other at the moment. They point out that the convergence of wired and wireless technologies into an all-IP (AIP) next generation network could remedy the situation and at the same time develop better fault tolerance, boost uptime and improve performance of end-to-end communications. But, we are a long way from effective convergence partly because we are running out of IP addresses and mobile IP (MIP) is not yet up to the task.
Jain and colleagues have developed the concept of a virtual identity (ID), that could facilitate the next generation connectivity by extending the explicit ID and location tag of mobile IP for IPv6. The Mobile IP (or IP mobility) from the Internet Engineering Task Force is a standard communications protocol that allows mobile devices to retain their permanent, unique IP address even when they skip from one network to another.
“With a wired phone, it is easy to determine location of the caller from their phone number unless they are calling from special numbers (such as toll free 800 number in the United States),” explains Jain. “A virtual ID is a specially reserved subset of IPv6 address space that gives no indication of location.”
A virtual ID will fully support MIP for mobility, multihoming (multihoming increases Internet connection reliability on an IP network), and location privacy, the team says; all under the standard connection protocol mobile IPv6.
With such a virtual ID in place, users will be able to use devices with a variety of networking technologies and remain highly mobile