Considerations on locator selection by multihomed hosts in future Internet

Abstract

Most user terminals or Internet hosts are equipped with two or more interfaces that can simultaneously be attached to different access networks. These multihomed hosts can offer ubiquitous and cost-effective connectivity, while improving resiliency and bandwidth. Each interface would get an address (or locator) from the edge network to which it attaches. Thus the multihomed host has multiple locators and it can use any one of them for its communication with other hosts. The source host should be able to select its own and the destination host's most appropriate locators so that the communication takes place through an optimal path that has lower delay or better bandwidth. However, in newly emerging heterogeneous networking environments where edge and transit networks use different network layer protocols and locator spaces, the source host may not be able to get all available locators of the destination host and communication may not take an optimal path. In this paper, we first elaborate the problem by comparing the original Internet's homogeneous environment with the emerging and future Internet's heterogeneous environment. Then, we propose a layered name resolution architecture that enables the source host to obtain all relevant locators of a destination host, out of which the source host can select one to communicate with the destination host through an optimal path.