UC Santa Cruz

Today's socket API requires an application to bind a socket to a network address before it can use the socket to communicate. Early bindings of names to addresses create significant bottlenecks, reliability problems, and force applications to manage complex lower-layer issues. Many approaches have been introduced to address this problem; however, all prior proposals introduce additional identifiers, modify applications, or require additional protocols in the protocol stack. In contrast, we propose a generalized socket API based on Internet Resource Descriptors (IRDs), which are opaque identifiers used by applications to refer to network resources and are known only within the hosts in which the applications run. IRDs enable sockets to evolve with the Internet by hiding mobility, multihoming, and multiplexing issues from applications, do not induce significant overhead in the protocol stack, preserve backwards compatibility with today's networks and applications, and do not require additional identifiers or protocols to be used in the protocol stack.