Scalable Internet Routing on Topology-Independent Node Identities

Unmanaged Internet Protocol (UIP) is a fully selforganizing network-layer protocol that implements scalable identity-based routing. In contrast with addressbased routing protocols, which depend for scalability on centralized hierarchical address management, UIP nodes use a flat namespace of cryptographic node identifiers. Node identities can be created locally on demand and remain stable across network changes. Unlike locationindependent name services, the UIP routing protocol can stitch together many conventional address-based networks with disjoint or discontinuous address domains, providing connectivity between any pair of participating nodes even when no underlying network provides direct connectivity. The UIP routing protocol works on networks with arbitrary topologies and global traffic patterns, and requires only O(log N) storage per node for routing state, enabling even small, ubiquitous edge devices to act as ad-hoc selfconfiguring routers. The protocol rapidly recovers from network partitions, bringing every node up-to-date in a multicast-based chain reaction of O(log N) depth. Simulation results indicate that UIP finds routes that are on average within 2× the length of the best possible route. This technical report describes a work in progress and does not contain complete, final, or polished results. This research was conducted as part of the IRIS project (http://project-iris.net/), supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. ANI-0225660.