A Less-Is-More Architecture (LIMA) for a Future internet

Abstract

new addressing and routing design called the Less-Is-More Architecture (LIMA) is proposed as an inter-domain solution for a future Internet. Unlike recently proposed identifier-locator split solutions, LIMA uses just (topological) location-independent names and location-dependent addresses. The feasibility of using a policy combination of restricting stubs to provider-aggregatable addressing only, and disallowing stub-level reachability from being propagated into the global routing tables, is studied. This policy combination results in significantly smaller global routing tables but creates four challenges of address renum-bering (when stubs change providers), multihoming, mobility, and traffic engineering. Solutions to these challenges include the use of multiaddressing, name based sockets, a LIMA concept of address dismemberment, transport protocols such as SCTP that are capable of dynamic address reconfiguration, and new management-plane and control-plane procedures. Preliminary RIB data analysis quantify the benefit of LIMA in global routing table size reduction (to 6815 entries from today's 335K entries), and a cost of LIMA in terms of number of provider changes made by stubs in the last six months (about 2450 provider changes per month across 33K stubs).