What is the X-Bone?

The X-Bone dynamically deploys and manages Internet overlays to reduce configuration effort and increase network component sharing. The X-Bone discovers, configures, and monitors network resources to create overlays over existing IP networks. Overlays are useful for deploying overlapping virtual networks on shared infrastructure and for simplifying topology.

The X-Bone extends current overlay management by adding dynamic resource discovery, deployment, and monitoring, and allows network components (hosts, routers) to participate simultaneously in multiple overlays.

The X-Bone's two-layer IP in IP tunneled overlays support existing applications and unmodified routing, multicast, and DNS services in unmodified host operating systems. This two-layer scheme uniquely supports node revisitation and recursive overlays, which is critical for fault tolerance and dynamic relocation.

The X-Bone uses multicast to simplify resource discovery, and provides secure deployment as well as secure overlays.

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Effort sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Air Force Research Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command, USAF, under agreement numbers F30602-98-1-0200 and F30602-01-2-0529. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Air Force Research Laboratory, or the U.S. Government.
This work was partly supported by the NSF STI-XTEND (ANI-0230789) and NETFS (ANI-0129689) projects. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.