1. IPng: Paths not taken worth revisiting
Jon Crowcroft,

2. IPng is > 20 years old, why now
IPv6 is sort of out there
But not really addressing core challenges
But the IPng requirements were broader
More recent Future Internet programs
havn’t gained a lot of traction
Perhaps because smart money was elsewhere
Cloud, data center, apps, smart phones etc

3. IPng alternatives nack then….
SIP v. PIP
Simple & FTIFs
Nimrod (& BGP)
Maps v. Path Vector
Catnip
Pluralisms (viz Plutarch)

4. Circumstances not what they were
Scale – yes,
roughly as predicted
Mobile/wireless – no
No real ip-level seamless handover
Cloud, virtualisation
Not at all predicted
Computation, Storage
Somewhat under-estimated

5. IPv6 v. Loose Source Route/soft circuit
One of the age old debates
Brittleness v. predictability
Maybe with slices/vpn, can re-visit
But then what for?
Route cache/fwd table lookup opt?
Maybe when 100% of planet covered
Three times over
Can start to see long term stability?
Including diurnal/timezone variance etc

6. Maps v. Link State or Path Vector
Nimrod (+to some extent PNNI routing)
Based on exchange of maps
Rather than vectors or LSAs
Maybe people were afraid of scale
Or revelation of internal details
To competitors or attackers
Especially if combined with source route
But can mitigate with accountable IP
And maybe other tricks….see later

7. Multi-protocol diversity
Virtualised switches
Many functions
Fast instantiation
Per flow or customer etc
Partitioned…
Programmable NICs
Offload v. bypass
(extreme case rdma fpga brainwave )

8. Low Latency and Resilience
Need cooperation between Aps
At spectrum, wireless, coding, packet level
But we’re competing in these levels too
“Coopetition”
Looks a bit like problem BGP solves
But fine grain, faster
And BGP doesn’t converge or operate fast enough or describe right resources
Exchange (encrypted) resource maps?

9. Exchange Encrypted Maps
And cooperating nodes have keys
Non-coop nodes use MPC to compute paths
MPC run on coop nodes
or use homomorphic crypto perhaps
Paths could be braided for resilience
multipath
Braiding can be generalised
Resource pool spectrum,
access lines, cell towers
backhaul, etc

10. Many apps don’t need paths
Generalise virtual path to virtual tree
Hose model+braiding
Virtual braided tree from net>customer
For media/cast
Virtual braided tree from customer>net
For IoT, collector nets

11. Virtualised switches&NICs
Can run resource pool algorithms
Over heterogeneous links, virtual paths
i.e. recursively over layers too
(c.f. John Day)
Braiding roughly like bundles of pathlets
Virtual path/braided treelets

12. Re-combination of Ipng ideas
From Nimrod & Catnip
updated to use virtualisation & crypto
To get isolation and cooperation

13. How can we build this from now?
First steps design performant crypto
Needed anyhow for commercial reasons
Get buy-in from others requires openness
By definition, this doesn’t work unless inclusive
Advantage for Huawei?
Leadership!
First mover etc