Name and address decoupling in support of dynamic networks

Many of the problems with dynamic networks, such as those envisioned in Future Combat Systems, lie in the fundamental IP architecture. A well-known problem is the coupling of names with the IP addresses used for routing. Names can reflect topology (e.g., domain names reflect their topological domain), which can limit survivability. More important, IP addresses identify hosts in the transport and application layers, which limits their ability to support multi-homing, allow Network Address Translation and rapidly reflect topological changes. Ideally, names should identify entities within a purely logical structure, with no correlation to topology, while addresses dynamically reflect the global network topology. This paper describes our approach to decoupling names and addresses based on some proposed changes to the current TCP/IP protocol suite. First, creating a Session Maintenance Protocol (SMP) with a new local Session Identifier that supports transparent changes to IP addresses. Second, replacing DNS, which simply returns the IP address associated with a name, with a Logic Name Server (LNS) that routes messages to the Location Server associated with a name. Third, identify small changes to many transport and higher layer protocols required to remove any dependence on IP addresses. Finally, we compare our approach to existing solutions in support of dynamic networks, such as Mobile IP and HIP.