Deployability of ILNP at Global Scale (DIGS)    

Overview

We will deliver dynamic multihoming for IPv6 end-systems with existing APIs and applications, without requiring updates to any infrastructure or routing protocols, or use of tunnels or proxies. Using ILNP, and building on IPv6 and DNS, we will demonstrate global connectivity on 6 continents. An implementation in FreeBSD will be made publicly available for commercial actors as well as the opensource community. Multipath transport and user privacy will be comprehensively demonstrated for TCP, UDP, and QUIC.

People

• Saleem Bhatti (University of St Andrews)
• Rodney Grimes (netDEF and FreeBSD)
• Alistair Woodman (netDEF)

• IETF126/Vienna : ILNP experiments continue (2026-06-02)

  Come and say, "Hello", to us at IETF126/Vienna! We will be at the Hackathon, and will have a demonstration set up throughout the week for ILNP.

• RIPE92/Edinburgh : Improving packet level privacy (2026-03-16)

  I will be giving a talk on how ILNP improves packet level privacy at RIPE92 in Edinburgh, UK, 18-22 May 2026.

  2026-06-02 update.

  • RIPE92 programme page
    Presentation: video (YouTube) | slides
  • Videos from the talk:
    
    1. ephemeral NID (eNID) demo (no sound)
    2. multipath flow demo (no sound)
  • Photos courtesy of RIPE NCC, photographs by Andrew Godfrey Photography
    1 | 2 | 3 | 4
  • Abstract:
    Improving communication privacy for the Internet is increasingly important for users. Although there are various forms of protection for communication privacy at various communication layers, Internet communication requires packet addressing information to remain visible for correct forwarding of packets. So, address bits could be used for tracking individual users in terms of network usage and location, as well as building a picture of service usage through flow correlation. This talk describes an approach to packet-level addressing that provides enhanced protection against such privacy attacks. The approach only requires updates to the end-systems, works over existing networks and for existing applications, and can be deployed incrementally.

• ILNP for FreeBSD 14.3 (2025-01-07)

  An implementation of ILNP on FreeBSD 14.3 (amd64) is now available. This is a port of the initial release on FreeBSD 14.0, details of which can still be found here.

• NANOG96/San-Francisco (2026-01-05)

  Come and say, "Hello", to us at NANOG96/San-Francisco! I will be giving a talk on recent results using ILNP for multihoming and multipath transport.

  2026-02-28 update.
  NANOG programme page.
  Presentation: video (YouTube) | slides
  Abstract
  There has long been a desire to have better support for multipath transport protocols to enable such capability as load distribution, resilience, mobile nodes & networks, better support for packet-level privacy and security, as well as other application areas. However, options for use of multipath transport protocols are currently limited for application developers and users. This talk presents some initial results in testing an implementation of multipath capability that can be controlled at the IP-layer from the end-systems using end-to-end signalling, and so could be applied to any transport protocol. A practical overview of the approach is given, based on an implementation in FreeBSD, including results from international connectivity tests conducted in November 2025 between IETF124/Montreal (Canada) and St Andrews (UK).

• IETF124/Montreal (2025-10-29)

  Come and say, "Hello", to us at IETF124/Montreal!. We will be at the Hackathon, and will have a demonstration set up throughout the week, including ILNP-enabled mulitpath transport and streaming video.

• IETF123/Madrid (2025-05-30)

  Come and say, "Hello", to us at IETF123/Madrid!. We will be at the Hackathon, and will have a demonstration set up throughout the week.

• DIGS project announced by ICANN (2025-05-29).

  ICANN has announced the recipients of funding in the first round of the ICANN Grant Program, here.