  This work presents a comprehensive and structured taxonomy of available
techniques for managing the handover process in mobility architectures.
Representative works from the existing literature have been divided into
appropriate categories, based on their ability to support horizontal handovers,
vertical handovers and multihoming. We describe approaches designed to work on
the current Internet (i.e. IPv4-based networks), as well as those that have
been devised for the "future" Internet (e.g. IPv6-based networks and
extensions). Quantitative measures and qualitative indicators are also
presented and used to evaluate and compare the examined approaches. This
critical review provides some valuable guidelines and suggestions for designing
and developing mobility architectures, including some practical expedients
(e.g. those required in the current Internet environment), aimed to cope with
the presence of NAT/firewalls and to provide support to legacy systems and
several communication protocols working at the application layer.
