University of St Andrews, School of Computer Science

ILNP - Identifier/Locator Network Protocol

Research Objectives

This project is enhancing the Internet Architecture by enriching the set of namespaces. The basic approach to this is to deprecate the concept of an Address and replace it with separate Locator and Identifier values. Although the architectural concept is independent of any particular network protocol, our research demonstration will be based on IPv6. We plan to experiment with our research demonstration implementation of ILNP over the UK Joint Academic Network (JANET) between St Andrews and London.

This work was influenced by Mike O'Dell's prior work on the GSE/8+8 proposal for IPv6 and by work undertaken in the IRTF Namespace Research Group (NSRG), although the current work is different in various ways from those earlier proposals and discussions.

Although our work is architectural, it is driven by actual problems with the current Internet Architecture. For example, a current operational concern addressed by this proposal is the rapid increase in size and in entropy of the Internet routing table, specifically the Default-Free Zone's (DFZ) Routing Information Base (RIB). It appears that a primary cause for both routing table growth and the increase in entropy is the current method for site multi-homing, which depends on adding extra more-specific prefixes globally for each multi-homed site.

We believe this approach will lead to several specific advantages over the currently deployed Internet Architecture. These advantages include:

• Support for both site and node multi-homing without increasing entropy in the Default-Free Zone (DFZ) Routing Information Base (RIB).
• Native, scalable support for mobile nodes and mobile networks.
• NAT-tolerant networking, by decoupling location from identity.
• IP Security working natively with Multi-Homing, Mobility, and NAT.
• Support for traffic engineering (TE) capability through naming.
• A simpler, cleaner Networking API for distributed applications.

Talks

• What's in a name?, Seminar at BBN Technologies, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. 21 November 2008.
• Thoughts on a New Namespace (Overview of ILNP), Presentation to the IRTF Routing Research Group, Dublin, Ireland. July 2008.
• Naming for Networking, Seminar at ICU, Daejeon, Chungghongdo. Republic of Korea. 18 June 2008.

Internet Drafts

• ILNP Concept of Operations draft-rja-ilnp-intro-03.txt
• Additional DNS Resource Records draft-rja-ilnp-dns-02.txt
• Nonce Destination Option draft-rja-ilnp-nonce-02.txt
• ICMP Locator Update Message draft-rja-ilnp-icmp-01.txt

Papers

• R. Atkinson, S. Bhatti, S. Hailes, ILNP: Mobility, Multi-Homing, Localised Addressing and Security Through Naming, Telecommunication Systems, vol. 42, no. 3-4 pp273-291. [Springer] Dec 2009. ISSN 1018-4864 print / 1572-9451 online.
• R. Atkinson, S. Bhatti, Site-Controlled Secure Multi-homing and Traffic Engineering for IP, 28th IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), Boston, MA, USA, October 2009
• D. Rehunthan, R. Atkinson, S. Bhatti, Enabling Mobile Networks Through Secure Naming, 28th IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), Boston, MA, USA, October 2009
• R. Atkinson, S. Bhatti, and S. Hailes, Harmonised Resilience, Multi-homing and Mobility Capability for IP, 27th IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), San Diego, CA, USA, November 2008.
• R. Atkinson, S. Bhatti, and S. Hailes, Mobility Through Naming: Impact on DNS , 3rd ACM International Workshop on Mobility in the Evolving Internet (MobiArch), Seatlle, USA, August 2008.
• R. Atkinson, S. Bhatti, and S. Hailes, A Proposal for Unifying Mobility with Multi-Homing, NAT, and Security, 5th ACM International Workshop on Mobility Management and Wireless Access (MobiWAC), Chania, Crete, October 2007.
• R. Atkinson, S. Bhatti, and S. Hailes, Mobility as an Integrated Service through the Use of Naming, 2nd ACM International Workshop on Mobility in the Evolving Internet (MobiArch), Kyoto, Japan, August 2007.
• R. Atkinson, M. Lad, S. Bhatti, and S. Hailes, A Proposal for Coalition Networking in Dynamic Operational Environments, 25th IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), Washington, DC, USA, November 2006.
• R. Atkinson, S. Bhatti, An Introduction to the Identifier/Locator Network Protocol (ILNP), IEEE London Communications Symposium (LCS), September 2006.
• R. Atkinson, S. Bhatti, Naming Enhancements for the Internet, IEEE London Communications Symposium (LCS), September 2004.

Partners

ILNP is a research collaboration among Cheltenham Research, the University of St Andrews, and University College London

Contacts

Updated 05 Novemner 2009.
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