Cisco is not currently accepting proposals for this RFP.
Project ID:
RFP-2007-004
Title:
Development of Naming and Addressing techniques for
traversal of NATs and Firewalls
Summary:
The introduction of NATs and Firewalls into the Internet has increased
the complexity of peer-to-peer application development, compared to
the relatively straightforward socket API. For example, the SIP
community has evolved a clever one-off solution that uses STUN, TURN,
and ICE to accomplish NAT traversal for Voice-over-IP.
The question is, can we develop an approach to naming and addressing,
perhaps also developing a library or API, that provides a general solution
to the NAT/Firewall traversal problem usable by a broad variety of
applications?
Full Description:
The socket API has provided a useful abstraction and toolkit for application
development for many years. The introduction of NATs and Firewalls in the
Internet has increased complexity of application development. For example,
multi-player games and Voice-over-IP have introduced significant code to
accomplish NAT traversal. Components for Voice-over-IP include STUN,
TURN, and ICE. How should naming and addressing work in this
environment? Can we develop a toolkit that includes a library and/or API
which enables a broad variety of applications to reach arbitrary endpoints
behind NATs, across arbitrary topologies?
Some issues include: appropriate model for name/address binding,
possibly address/locator separation, and incremental deployment
properties. Even if several component technologies exist, can we
assemble them into a coherent whole, with a simplicity and usability
that rivals the socket programming API?
This is a significant problem space, the solution to which will have
broad benefit for the Internet. As such, Cisco will not seek IPR,
and will also expect that promising results will be made available
to the community without limiting licenses, royalties, or other
encumbrances.
Constraints and other information:
(none specified)
Proposal submission:
Cisco is not currently accepting proposals for this RFP.
Questions? Contact: research@cisco.com
