Host Identity Protocol (hip)

Charter for Working Group

The Host Identity Protocol (HIP) provides a method of separating the
end-point identifier and locator roles of IP addresses. It introduces
a new Host Identity (HI) name space, based on public keys, from which
end-point identifiers are taken. The public keys are typically, but
not necessarily, self generated. HIP uses existing IP addressing and
forwarding for locators and packet delivery.

The architecture and protocol details for these mechanisms are
currently specified in the following Experimental RFCs:

o HIP Architecture (RFC 4423)
o Host Identity Protocol (RFC 5201)

There are several publicly known interoperating implementations, some
of which are open source.

The HIP WG was chartered to publish protocol specifications in
documents whose quality and security properties would meet the
requirements for publication as standards track documents. These
specifications have been published as Experimental RFCs, because the
effects of the protocol on applications and on the Internet as a whole
were unknown.

The Experimental RFCs produced by the HIP WG allowed the community to
experiment with HIP technologies and learn from these experiments.
The HIP WG will now produce standards track versions of the main HIP
RFCs taking as a base the existing Experimental RFCs. The WG will also
specify certificate handling in HIP in a standards track RFC.

Additionally, the WG will finish the WG items it was working on before
starting the standards track work. These WG items relate to how to
build HIP-based overlays and will result in Experimental RFCs.

The following are charter items for the working group:

o Revise RFCs 4423, 4843, 5201, 5202, 5203, 5204, 5205, 5206, and 5770
as standards track RFCs.

o Specify in a standards track RFC how to carry certificates in the
base exchange. This was removed from the base HIP spec so that the
mechanism is specified in a stand-alone spec.

o Specify in an Experimental RFC how to build a HIP-based overlay
using RELOAD.

o Specify in an Experimental RFC how to transport HIP messages over
encrypted connections that were established using HIP.

Milestones