Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol

The current addressing architecture used by the Internet Protocol uses IP addresses for two separate functions:

• as an end-point addressing identifier to uniquely identify a network interface within its local network addressing context
• as a locator for routing purposes, to identify where a network interface is located within a larger routing context

Several proposals for separating the two functions and allowing the Internet to scale better have been proposed, for instance the Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol and GSE/8+8 as network based solutions and SHIM6 and HIP as host based solutions.

In the Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol the network elements (routers) are responsible for performing the mapping between end-point-indentifiers (EID) and route locators (RLOC) and this process is invisible to the Internet end-hosts.

Advantages of LISP

• Cheap multihoming without BGP, AS & PI Space
• Address family traversal, for example: IPv6 to IPv6 over IPv4 or IPv4 to IPv4 over IPv6

References

• IPJ article about LISP
• TERENA LISP presentation
• Scaling the Internet with LISP tutorial
• http://www.lisp4.net

See also

• Host Identity Protocol
• SHIM6