A secure mechanism for address block allocation and distribution

Abstract

All equipments attached to the Internet are configured with one or several IP addresses. Most hosts are able to automatically request (e.g., from a DHCP server) or discover (e.g., by using stateless autoconfiguration) the IP address that they should use. This simplifies the configuration and the management of hosts. Unfortunately, these techniques do not apply on routers whose IP addresses and subnet prefixes for their directly attached LANs still need to be manually configured. This utilization of manual configuration is error-prone and a frequent source of errors. It is also one of the reasons why IP address renumbering is so difficult with both IPv4 and IPv6. In this paper, we propose a new address block allocation and distribution protocol that has been designed to be both secure and efficient. We first summarize the main requirements of an address block allocation mechanism. We then describe the operation of our proposed mechanism. Finally, we demonstrate the efficiency of our protocol by simulations. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.