Host Identity Protocol Rendezvous Servers which store information about nodes connected to other servers and forward address requests

Host Identity Protocol (HIP) proposals use a domain name service (DNS) to look up addresses of a Rendezvous Servers (RVS) which know the current location of a desired HIP node. Problems with this approach are that it might be undesirable to share RVS location information with a public DNS, that for some private networks a DNS may not be available and that the use of a single RVS is not robust. Here failure of a single RVS leads to a loss of service for all HIP nodes served by the RVS. The invention solves this problem by sharing data amongst multiple RVSs. Full Host Identity (HI) to location address data may be duplicated or RVSs may store a list of HIP nodes served by another RVS. Where an RVS does not know the location of a HIP node a request is forwarded until an RVS with the location is found.