reverse tunneling

Reverse tunneling is a method used by Mobile IP, among others, to generate an address for a mobile node in the home network.

With Mobile IP, ingress filtering destroys data packets that a router cannot assign to its home network. These data packets originate from mobile nodes in foreign networks, where the sender address, the home address of the mobile node, does not match the topological origin of the packets. To prevent this, the mobile node can "reverse tunnel" self-generated data packets with the correct sender information to the router in the home network. The router then routes the data packets to the destination address.