Separating routing and forwarding: A clean-slate network layer design

We present a ”clean-slate” design for a network-layer routing and forwarding system intended to address short-comings of the current Internet Protocol. Our design separates routing from both forwarding and topology discovery; requires only a flat, topology-independent namespace; and allows for policies of both users and service providers to be supported. Channels serve as the primary abstraction, allowing the network topology to be viewed at multiple levels of abstraction using the same identifiers. In this paper we present the basic design, which is based on loose source routing. Our routing and forwarding scheme is part of a larger project to produce a “clean-slate” network layer design.