Mobile IP Administration Guide

Agent Advertisement

Mobile nodes use agent advertisements to determine their current point of attachment to the Internet or to an organization's network. An agent advertisement is an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) router advertisement that has been extended to also carry a mobility agent advertisement extension.

A foreign agent can be too busy to serve additional mobile nodes. However, a foreign agent must continue to send agent advertisements. This way, mobile nodes that are already registered with it will know that they have not moved out of range of the foreign agent and that the foreign agent has not failed.