Host Identity Protocol Distributed Hash Table Interface
RFC 6537

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Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)                         J. Ahrenholz
Request for Comments: 6537                            The Boeing Company
Category: Experimental                                     February 2012
ISSN: 2070-1721

        Host Identity Protocol Distributed Hash Table Interface

Abstract

   This document specifies a common interface for using the Host
   Identity Protocol (HIP) with a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) service
   to provide a name-to-Host-Identity-Tag lookup service and a Host-
   Identity-Tag-to-address lookup service.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for examination, experimental implementation, and
   evaluation.

   This document defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
   community.  This document is a product of the Internet Research Task
   Force (IRTF).  The IRTF publishes the results of Internet-related
   research and development activities.  These results might not be
   suitable for deployment.  This RFC represents the consensus of the
   HIP Research Group of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).
   Documents approved for publication by the IRSG are not a candidate
   for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6537.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2012 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.

Ahrenholz                     Experimental                      [Page 1]
RFC 6537                    HIP DHT Interface              February 2012

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. The OpenDHT Interface ...........................................3
   3. HDRR - The HIP DHT Resource Record ..............................6
   4. HIP Lookup Services .............................................8
      4.1. HIP Name to HIT Lookup .....................................9
      4.2. HIP Address Lookup ........................................12
   5. Use Cases ......................................................15
   6. Issues with DHT Support ........................................16
   7. Security Considerations ........................................17
   8. IANA Considerations ............................................18
   9. Acknowledgments ................................................18
   10. References ....................................................19
      10.1. Normative References .....................................19
      10.2. Informative References ...................................19

1.  Introduction

   The Host Identity Protocol (HIP) [RFC5201] may benefit from a lookup
   service based on Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs).  The Host Identity
   namespace is flat, consisting of public keys, in contrast to the
   hierarchical Domain Name System (DNS).  These keys are hashed and
   prefixed to form Host Identity Tags (HITs), which appear as large
   random numbers.  As the current DNS system has been heavily optimized
   for address lookup, it may be worthwhile to experiment with other
   services such as those defined here.  DHTs manage such data well by
   applying a hash function that distributes data across a number of
   servers.  DHTs are also designed to be updated more frequently than a
   DNS-based approach.  For an alternative method of using HITs to look
   up IP addresses using DNS, see [HIT2IP].

   One freely available implementation of a DHT is the Bamboo DHT, which
   is Java-based software that has been deployed on PlanetLab servers to
   form a free service named OpenDHT.  OpenDHT was available via the
   Internet for any program to store and retrieve arbitrary data.
   OpenDHT used a well-defined Extensible Markup Language-Remote
   Procedure Calling (XML-RPC) interface, featuring put, get, and remove
   operations.  OpenLookup, while not implemented as a DHT, is another
   deployment of open source software compatible with this OpenDHT
   interface.  This document discusses a common way for HIP to use this
   OpenDHT interface, so that various HIP experimenters may employ
   lookup services in an interoperable fashion.

   This document is a product of the HIP research group (RG) of the
   IRTF.  The HIP research group reached consensus that this interface
   specification should be published as an Experimental RFC, based on

Ahrenholz                     Experimental                      [Page 2]
RFC 6537                    HIP DHT Interface              February 2012