SUMMARYCurrent network technologies, mainly represented by the Internet, have demonstrated little capacity to evolve because of the strict binding of communications to identifiers and locators. While locator namespaces represent the position of communication participants in the graph of a specific protocol, unstructured/plain identifiers represent the position of communications participants in the global network graph. Although they are valid for forwarding packets along communication paths, both views fail to fully represent the actual entities behind communications beyond a simple vertex. In this paper we introduce and evaluate an identitybased control plane that resolves these problems by abstracting communications from identifiers and locators and by using identities to achieve enhanced security, and mobility management operations. This identity-based control plane can then be integrated into different network architectures in order to incorporate the features it provides. This facilitates the evolution capacity of those architectures that separate the information transmission concerns (networking, routing), from end-to-end aspects like security and mobility management.