The Internet Protocol (IP) has become the global standard in any computer network, independent of the connectivity to the Internet. Generally, an IP address is used to identify an interface on a network device. Routing protocols are also required and developed based on the assumption that a destination address has this semantic with routing decisions made on addresses and additional fields in the packet headers. Over time, routing decisions were enhanced to route packets according to additional information carried within the packets and dependent on policy coded in, configured at, or signaled to the routers. Many proposals have been made to add semantics to IP addresses. The intent is usually to facilitate routing decisions based solely on the address and without finding and processing information carried in other fields within the packets. This document is presented as a survey to support the study and further research into clarifying and understanding the issues. It does not pass comment on the advisability or practicality of any of the proposals and does not define any technical solutions
Open Access version
Published
Individual IETF Internet-Draft – May 2023
Publication type