End-to-end privacy for identity & location with IP

Abstract

We describe protocol features to provide both Identity Privacy and Location Privacy at the network layer that are truly end-to-end, strengthening the trust model by constraining the boundary of trust to only the communicating parties. We show that Identity Privacy and Location Privacy can be provided by changing only the addressing model, whilst still remaining compatible with IPv6. Using the Identifier-Locator Network Protocol (ILNP), it is possible to use ephemeral end-system ILNP Node Identity (NID) values to improve identity privacy. Using the ILNP Locator values with dynamic bindings, it is possible to use multiple IPv6 routing prefixes as network Locator (L64) values to provide (topological) location privacy. This is achieved: (a) whilst maintaining end-to-end state for transport protocols, without proxies, tunnels, or gateways at the transport layer or application layer; and (b) without the use of cryptographic techniques, so performance is not impacted.