IP without IP addresses

D. Phoomikiattisak was funded by the Thai Government. B. Simpson was funded by Cisco Systems under a University Research Programme (URP) grant award.We discuss a key engineering challenge in implementing the Identifier- Locator Network Protocol (ILNP), as described in IRTF Experimental RFCs 6740-6748: enabling legacy applications that use the C sockets API. We have built the first two OS kernel implementations of ILNPv6 (ILNP as a superset of IPv6), in both the Linux OS kernel and the FreeBSD OS kernel. Our evaluation is in comparison with IPv6, in the context of a topical and challenging scenario: host mobility implemented as a purely end-to-end function. Our experiments show that ILNPv6 has excellent potential for deployment using existing IPv6 infrastructure, whilst offering the new properties and functionality of ILNP.Postprin

Seamless Internet connectivity for ubiquitous communication

The direct and flexible use of any network connectivity that is available within an urban scenario is essential for the successful operation of ubiquitous systems. We demonstrate seamless communication across different networks without the use of middleware, proxies, tunnels, or address translation, with minimal (near-zero) packet loss to communication flows as handoff occurs between networks. Our solution does not require any new functions in existing networks, will work on existing infrastructure, and does not require applications to be re-designed or re-engineered. Our solution requires only modifications to the end-systems involved in communication, so can be deployed incrementally only for those end-systems that require the functionality. We describe our approach and its design, based on the use of the Identifier-Locator Network Protocol (ILNP), which can be realised directly on IPv6. We demonstrate the efficacy of our solution with testbed experiments based on modifications to the Linux kernel v4.9 LTS, operating directly over IPv6, and using unmodified binary applications utilising directly the standard socket(2) POSIX.1-2008 API, and standard C library calls. As our approach is 'end-to-end', we also describe how to maintain packet-level secrecy and identity privacy for the communication flow as part of our approach.Postprin

Network Layer Soft Handoff for IP Mobility

We present an empirical evaluation of network-layer soft handoff for IP mobility. Such functionality is not currently available for Mobile IP. Our new approach, based on the Identifier Locator Network Protocol (ILNP), requires no additional network entities such as proxies and it does not require modification of any routing protocols. Only the communicating hosts need to to have their end-system protocol stacks updated and so it is incrementally deployable. In our performance evaluation, we find that soft handoff minimises packet loss, with the observed packet loss during handoff being no worse than the natural loss of the end-to-end path

Fast, secure failover for IP

We describe a mechanism for fast, secure failover for IP. The mechanism is invisible to end-systems: sessions are maintained during failover. Our novel approach is to model the failover as a mobility problem, and use a mobility solution in order to implement change in connectivity. Our system is based on the Identity Locator Network Protocol (ILNP), an Experimental IRTF protocol which is realised as superset of IPv6. Our empirical results from a test bed emulation show that there is almost zero gratuitous loss during failover