The
IPREFTM Project
Ubiquitous compatibility throughout the Internet
The
Technology
The IPREF project develops technologies that allow direct communication across different address spaces such as private networks behind NAT/NAT6 or networks running different protocols IP4/IPv6. It is a compatibility technology available widely throughout the entire Internet.
Such a wide, massive compatibility is possible thanks to an innovative approach to resolution of addresses belonging to different address spaces. One may observe that the originating devices do not need to know the exact destination addresses so long as they can be referred to in some commonly understood manner. The same goes for source addresses at the destination.
This can be achieved by foregoing protocol native addresses altogether in favor of opaque references to addresses. The references are simple integers which are interpreted locally at each address space to produce appropriate native addresses valid within that space.
This is the essence of IPREF. The term IPREF stands for IP addressing with REFerences and it’s pronounced I-P-REF.
Traversing Address Spaces
Local networks, whether IPv4 or IPv6, remain unchanged retaining their native addresses. Hosts are unaware of any IPREF processing. They know nothing about the references. For them, remote hosts appear as if on some local private network. They don’t know whether remote hosts are IPv4 or IPv6, they also don’t know whether the Internet runs IPv4 or IPv6. All IPREF processing is encapsulated within IPREF gateways. The gateways exchange references between each other. When forwarding packets to local networks, all references are stripped off and proper native addresses are placed in the source and destination fields. It is a stateless process, similar to looking up a route in a routing table.
Many organizations employ complex network configurations with a mix of private networks potenrially running different protocols. These networks communicate with each other via the same IPREF gateways that send traffic over the Internet.
The middle network is the Internet. It is decoupled from the enterprise networks, user networks, all its customers networks. It takes no part in IPREF processing. It is totally unaware of it. IPREF does not require anything special from the Internet. It works with pure IPv4 Internet or pure IPv6 Internet. The Internet is free to evolve independently in any way desired. It could even introduce a brand new protocol, so long as the IPREF gateways are updated to understand it, and so long as they can continue to exchange information with peer gateways unimpeded.
The Internet
IPv4/IPv6
References are allocated and managed by local admins. There is no central authority. There is no need for one. Each local admin allocates its own references, i.e. those referring to hosts in that admin’s domain. References to remote hosts are accepted as is. There is no need for negotiations or any conflict resolution protocols. This design produces a massively scalable address space traversal system.
IPREF addresses are publishable in the DNS. They differ from IPv4 addresses and IPv6 addresses in that they contain references. Other than that, they behave the same way. Local admins may elect to publish IPREF addresses of some services within their domain such as websites, mail servers, ssh access points, etc. In this way, these service become publicly reachable even though they don’t have any ‘global’ addresses, only local private addresses.
Thanks to IPREF, ‘global’ addresses are not needed. Local hosts may obtain addresses of remote hosts via specialized resolvers that understand IPREF addresses. The resolvers translate IPREF addresses to native addresses in cooperation with IPREF gateways.
IPREF operates at the networking layer but it is not a protocol. It is an add-on to existing protocols that enhances their addressing capabilities. These enhanced capabilities make normally incompatible protocols compatible. IPREF does its work by managing references to addresses.
It does not introduce any new addressing spaces or any addressing schemes. It always refers to existing native addresses and defers to native protocols for all other network layer functions such as routing, address resolution etc. Of course, such compatibility is practical only if the higher level protocols, such as TCP and UDP are compatible across the network protocols. Fortunately, such compatibility exists across IPv4 and IPv6.
IPREF primary functionality is traversing different address spaces. This includes NAT traversal, NAT6 traversal, and cross protocol traversal. It is inherently peer-to-peer, symmetric, and always on. An IPv4 host on a local network may have a peer-to-peer connectivity with another IPv4 host on another private IPv4 local network, or with a host on a private IPv6 networks.
The peers do not know what protocols each of them run. Local admins have the ability to allow or disallow access. By default, no hosts are accessible externally. Typically external access is given to servers. Their IPREF addresses are usually advertised in DNS.
Evolution of the Internet
Multiprotocol Internet with ubiquitous compatibility
