Simulating LISP with NS3

Abstract

The Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP) is a novel routing architecture for the Internet that is based on the locator/identifier separation paradigm. The principle is to split the current address space into the identifier address space, which is composed of locally routable addresses used for identification; and the locator address space, composed of globally routable addresses used to route traffic in the network. The main objective is to solve the current Internet’s routing scalability problems threatening the network performance. Besides that, LISP also brings several new interesting benefits, in particular for Traffic Engi- neering (TE), and multi-homing. In this master thesis, we investigated LISP mobile nodes, in conjunction with NAT traversal for LISP traffic, through simulations on the ns-3 Network Simulator. To do so, we adapted the existing LISP implementation in ns-3 to add several functionalities to the model. Our main contribution consisted into adding a NAT model, proxy features (interworking mechanism used for communication between LISP sites and non-LISP sites), as well as the NAT extensions (LISP+NAT) to the LISP model. Additionally, we wrote a LISP-MN Helper, meant to help the script writer to easily setup a simulation scenario with mobile nodes and handovers. Finally, several unit tests have been integrated into the ns-3 testing framework for the NAT and LISP models. Our results confirm the intuition that NAT traversal has a negative impact on path stretch and on the handover delay. Indeed, most of the time, the handover delay when roaming into a non-LISP site behind a NAT is superior to the handover delay when roaming into a non-LISP site with no NAT deployment.