Seamless network renumbering in RINA: Automate address changes without breaking flows!

Network renumbering in the IP world is a complicated and expensive procedure that has to be carefully planned and executed to avoid routing, security (firewall, ACLs) and transport connection integrity problems. The source of most of these issues is in the lack of a complete naming and addressing architecture in the TCP/IP protocol suite. This paper analyses the issues related to IP networks renumbering, identifying its root causes. Then it looks into how these issues affect renumbering in networks based on RINA, a network architecture with a complete naming scheme. Theoretical analysis backed up by experimentation results indicate that renumbering in RINA networks not only is seamless (can be done without impacting existing flows) but also does not require any special mechanisms.