[lisp] WG Review: Locator/ID Separation Protocol (lisp)

[IESG Secretary <[e-mail]>]

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Routing Area.  The IESG
has not made any determination as yet.  The following draft charter was
submitted, and is provided for informational purposes only.  Please send
your comments to the IESG mailing list ([e-mail]) by Tuesday, March
24, 2009.

Locator/ID Separation Protocol (lisp)
--------------------------------------------------
Last Modified: 2009-03-12

Current status: Proposed Working Group

Chair(s):
TBD

Internet Area Director(s):
TBD

Routing Area Advisor:
TBD

Mailing Lists:
General Discussion: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/lisp

Description of Working Group:

The IAB's October 2006 workshop on Routing and Addressing Workshop (RFC
4984) rekindled interest in scalable routing and addressing architectures
for the Internet. Among the many issues driving this renewed interest are
concerns about the scalability of the routing system and the impending
exhaustion of the IPv4 address space. Since the IAB workshop, several
proposals have emerged which attempt to address the concerns expressed
there and elsewhere. In general, these proposals are based on the
"Locator/Identifier separation".

The basic idea behind the separation that the Internet architecture
combines two functions, Routing Locators, or RLOCs (where you are attached
to the network) and Endpoint Identifiers, or EIDs (who you are) in one
number space: The IP address. Proponents of the separation architecture
postulate that splitting these functions apart will yield
several advantages, including improved scalability for the routing system.
The separation aims to decouple location and identity, thus allowing for
efficient aggregation of the RLOC space and providing persistent identity
in the EID space.

LISP supports the separation of the Internet address space into Endpoint
Identifiers and Routing Locators following a network-based map-and-encap
scheme (RFC 1955). It employs EIDs that represent a mixture of locators
and identifiers; it could also be classified as a multi-level locator
scheme.  A number of other approaches are being looked at in parallel in
the IRTF and IETF. At this time, these proposals are at an early stage.
All proposals (including LISP) have potentially harmful side-effects to
Internet traffic carried by the involved routers, have parts where
deployment incentives may be lacking, and are NOT RECOMMENDED for
deployment beyond experimental situations at this stage. Many of the
proposals have components (such as the EID-to-RLOC mapping system) where
it is not yet known what kind of design alternative is the best one among
many.

However, despite these issues it would be valuable to write
concrete protocol specifications and develop implementations that can be
used to understand the characteristics of these designs. The LISP WG is
chartered to work on the LISP base protocol (draft-farinacci-lisp-12.txt),
the LISP+ALT mapping system (draft-fuller-lisp-alt-05.txt), LISP
Interworking (draft-lewis-lisp-interworking-02.txt), LISP Map Server
(draft-fuller-lisp-ms-00.txt), and LISP multicast
(draft-farinacci-lisp-multicast-01.txt) for these purposes, with the given
drafts as a starting point. The working group will encourage and support
interoperable LISP implementations as well as defining requirements for
alternate mapping systems. The Working Group will also develop security
profiles for the ALT and/or other mapping systems.

It is expected that the results of specifying, implementing, and testing
LISP will be fed to the general efforts at the IETF and IRTF (e.g., the
Routing Research Group) that attempts to understand which type of a
solution is optimal. The LISP WG is NOT chartered to develop
the final or standard solution for solving the routing scalability
problem. Its specifications are Experimental and labeled with accurate
disclaimers about their limitations and not fully understood implications
for Internet traffic. In addition, as these issues are understood, the
working group will analyze and document the implications of LISP on
Internet traffic, applications, routers, and security. This analysis will
explain what role LISP can play in scalable routing. The analysis should
also look at scalability and levels of state required for encapsulation,
decapsulation, liveness, and so on
(draft-meyer-loc-id-implications).

Goals and Milestones:

Mar 2010 Submit base LISP specification to the IESG as Experimental

Mar 2010 Submit base ALT specification to the IESG as Experimental

Mar 2010 Submit the LISP Interworking specification to the IESG as
Experimental

June 2010 Submit the LISP Map Server specification to the IESG as
Experimental

June 2010 Submit Recommendations for Securing the LISP Mapping System to
the IESG as Experimental

Jul 2010 Submit LISP for Multicast Environments to the IESG as
Experimental

Dec 2010 Submit a preliminary analysis as Informational

Dec 2010 Re-charter or close.