The Host Identity Protocol (HIP) provides a method of separating the
end-point identifier and locator roles of IP addresses. It introduces
a new Host Identity (HI) name space, based on public keys. The public
keys are typically, but not necessarily, self generated.

There are five publicly known interoperating HIP implementations, some
of which are open source.

Currently, the HIP base protocol works well with any pair of
co-operating end-hosts. However, to be more useful and more widely
deployable, HIP needs some support from the existing infrastructure,
including the DNS, and a new piece of infrastructure, called the HIP
rendezvous server. Additionally, in order to facilitate experimenting
with HIP, there is a need to study the interactions of HIP with legacy
NATS and legacy applications, and to describe an API for HIP.

+----------------------------------------------------------+
| The purpose of this Working Group is to define the       |
| minimal elements that are needed for HIP experimentation |
| on a wide scale.                                         |
+----------------------------------------------------------+

In particular, the objective of this working group is to complete the
base protocol specification, define one or more DNS resource records
for storing HIP related data, complete the existing work on basic
mobility and multi-homing, complete the work on NATs and on APIs, and
produce Experimental RFCs for these.

Note that even though the specifications are chartered for
Experimental, it is understood that their quality and security
properties should match the standards track requirements. The main
purpose for producing Experimental documents instead of standards
track ones are the unknown effects that the mechanisms may have on
applications and on the Internet in the large.

There is a roughly parallel, though perhaps considerably broader, IRTF
Research Group that includes efforts both on developing the more
forward looking aspects of the HIP architecture and on exploring the
effects that HIP may have on applications and the Internet.