An Internet without the Internet protocol

Abstract

The growth of the Internet has brought about many challenges for its critical infrastructure. The DNS infrastructure, which translates mnemonic host names into IP addresses understood by the routers, is frequently the target of cache poisoning attacks. Internet routers are also experiencing alarming growth in their routing table sizes, which may soon make it impossible for them to forward packets quickly enough to meet demand. Further, concerns about IPv4 address space exhaustion loom on the horizon despite the availability of IPv6. In this paper, we take a fresh look at Internet routing and propose a scheme that addresses all of these concerns cleanly. Our scheme forgoes IP addresses entirely and instead uses host names as identifiers in packets. The scalability of routing is ensured by encapsulating these packets in highly aggregated routing locators: we use autonomous system numbers (ASNs), which are already an integral part of inter-domain routing. We present data and experiments to show that a much simpler and scalable routing infrastructure can be designed for a future Internet by using fewer identifiers for its entities.