CAPWAPHP is a new handover and context transfer protocol for WLAN hosts managed by an access controller. The handover protocol is designed to ensure that the station has an association with a single wireless termination point and when the station does a handover to another wireless termination point, ensure that forwarding tables of the switches are updated. The context transfer protocol is designed as an original application of IETF's context transfer protocol using neighbor graphs. Station authentication context which is established at the association time gets transferred to neighboring wireless termination points and as a result, in subsequent reassociations the authentication time can be reduced. For Split MAC wireless termination points the context is stored at the access controller. Soft-state Markov chain analysis results indicate that context hit rates increase with average residence times under a wireless termination point and simulation results indicate that much shorter handover latencies result compared with full authentication without context transfer.
['Behcet Sarikaya', 'Xiao Zheng']
CAPWAP Handover Protocol