A new location layer for the TCP/IP protocol stack

Abstract

The IPv4 address space is quickly getting exhausted, putting a tremendous pressure on the adoption of even more NAT levels or IPv6. On the other hand, many authors propose the adoption of new Internet addressing capabilities, namely content-based addressing, to complement the existing IP host-based addressing. In this paper we propose the introduction of a location layer, between transport and network layers, to address both problems. We keep the existing IPv4 (or IPv6) host-based core routing functionalities, while we enable hosts to become routers between separate address spaces by exploring the new location header. For a proof of concept, we modified the TCP/IP stack of a Linux host to handle our new protocol layer and we designed and conceived a novel NAT box to enable current hosts to interact with the modified stack.