A Survey of Mapping Systems for Locator/Identifier Split Internet Routing

The locator/identifier split is a core principle of many recently proposed routing architectures for a scalable future Internet. It splits the function of today´s IP addresses into two separate pieces. End-hosts are addressed using identifiers which are not globally routable while network attachment points have globally routable locators assigned. In most architectures, either the sending host or an intermediate node has to query a mapping system to obtain locators for identifiers. Such a mapping system must be fast, reliable, secure, and may be able to relay data packets. In this paper, we propose requirements and a general taxonomy for mapping systems and use it to provide a survey on recent proposals. We address general aspects of mapping systems and point out remaining research opportunities.