On the Dynamics of Locators in LISP

Abstract

In the Internet, IP addresses play the dual role of identifying the hosts and locating them on the topology. This design choice limits the way a network can control its traffic and causes scalability issues. To overcome this limitation, the Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP) has been introduced. In LISP, the addresses used to identify end hosts (i.e., identifiers) are independent of the addresses used to locate them (i.e., locators). LISP maps identifiers into a list of locators and provides a mean to transport the packets with the appropriate locator. A key feature of this separation is that several locators can be associated to a given identifier, leading to more control for an end-site on the path selection to reach a given destination. In this paper, we show that the choice of the locator can have an impact on the performance and the reliability of the communication in a LISP environment. To this aim, we build a mapping between identifiers and locators as if LISP were deployed today. In addition, we extensively collect delay data between locators and demonstrate that the locator selection for a given identifier prefix impacts the performance of the LISP path in 25% of the cases. Finally, we measure the locators availability over time and demonstrate that it remains quite stable.

Implementation and Evaluation of LISP Publish/Subscribe

“…It is important to mention that, in order to have realistic results, the transmission delay between XTRs has been modeled using the measurements results from Saucez et al [14]. For the same reason, the mapping system resolution delay has been modeled upon the DNS system resolution delay.…”

On the performance of the LISP beta network

“…Most of the research on LISP, up to now, has been based either on theoretical models or simulations. Such research works focused mostly on specific aspects of the overall LISP architecture, like for instance, the LISP Cache [9], [10], [11], the dynamics of locators [12], mobility [13], security [14], [15], [16], or traffic engineering techniques [17], [18] and the mapping system [19].…”