There is a growing consensus that identifier/locator separation is a promising solution to the scalability issue of the current routing infrastructure. After locators are separated from identifiers, end hosts roam from place to place without changing their identifiers. On the other hand, their locators change when they roam from one place to another, which leads to changes of identifier-to-locator mappings. In this paper, we quantify the rate of change in identifier-to-locator mappings by analyzing the intervals of consecutive handovers, based on real data traces collected from 2,348 buses, 536 taxis, and several tens of pedestrians. We believe that our results lay a solid foundation for the design and performance evaluation of mapping mechanisms that map identifiers onto locators in networks with identifier/locator separation.
