We have registered the domain name suffix avesnet.net and deployed an AVES prototype system. A Linux PC serves as the AVES-aware DNS server for the avesnet.net domain. Two other Linux PCs serve as waypoints, each with 25 IP aliases for a total of 50 waypoint IP addresses. We currently have ten trial subscribers. Subscribing to AVES is a simple three step process. A reusable-IP network operator needs to (1) obtain a sub-domain under avesnet.net from the service operator, (2) inform the service operator the desired DNS name to reusable-IP address mappings, and (3) run the AVES NAT gateway daemon.
Using our prototype, we have shown that a diverse set of applications work seamlessly with AVES. We are able to remote login from any IP host to a demo reusable-IP host called demo1 using telnet or ssh, perform file transfers using ftp (when multi-homing is disabled, using non-passive mode) or scp, export a NFS file system on demo1 and mount the file system on any IP host. We are also able to host a web server on demo1 and access the content from any IP host. When logging in from demo1 to an IP server (by out-bound NAT), we are able to directly bring up X Windows applications on demo1 after the DISPLAY environment variable has been correctly set. Diagnostic tools such as ping and traceroute also work transparently (with limitations described in Section 6). An on-line demo of our prototype can be found at https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eugeneng/research/aves/.