On Hierarchical Addressing In IP Networks

The Internet has seen its 30 years, and as wider and wider the Internet has been deployed, the foundation of the Internet, TCP/IP protocol suite has been confronting with various problems. A prominent one among these problems is the depletion of IPv4 address. The methods to address this problem fall into two categories: design brand-new IP protocol, or patching on IPv4.To address the problems of IPv4 address depletion, IPv4 routing table explosion, network management, and new demands from new applications, IETF in 1996 released the next generation IP protocol - IPv6. For the similar ends, specification for private IP address released in 1996, temporally allocating IP address protocol - DHCP released in 1993, specification for more efficiently use of IP address - CIDR released in 1993, and specification for multiplexing IP address - NAT (network address translation) released in 1994 fall into the second category.First, on addressing the problems of IPv4 address depletion and IPv4 routing table explosion, we propose a model of hierarchical addressing in IP networks, IPEA. This addressing model extends the address place to as big as IPv6's. In this model, address space is organized into a tree, each layer in the tree is identified by different class addresses, which saves, in the process of packets forwarding, the intermediate routers from swapping the addresses in the packet head. The length of routing table maintained in each node is reduced to the size of the local cluster, which helps addressing the problem of IPv4 routing table explosion. We prove the correctness and analyse the complexity of this addressing model. The co-operability between IPEA and IPv4 is illustrated, and the simulation results on performance of IPEA are provided. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that IP address extending model is incoperated with hierarchical routing model.Second, we analyse the performance of hierarchical addressing in IP...