YIP (Yinrih Internetworking protocol) is used to address nodes on the realspace internetwork. intra-planetary links are made with optical fiber, and inter-planetary and interstellar links are made using FTL Underlay tunnels.

The Allied Worlds, having a much denser population compared to Partisan Territory and the Spacer Confederacy, can afford a network of realspace repeater satellites that have much slower ping times but far higher bandwidth.

YIP addresses consist of 81 trits (27 BB27 digits). This gives YIP an address space of 3^81 or roughly 4.43*10^38. Since it’s balanced ternary, half the space is negative and half is positive. This distinction is likely significant but I’m not yet sure how. Perhaps negative addresses cannot cross the borders between autonomous systems, making them similar to IPv6 unique local addresses or RFC 1918 IPv4 addresses.

A YIP address may be written in nine groups of three BB27 digits like this

bcd-fgh-jkl-mnp-qBC-DFG-HJK-LMN-PQb

The address may be further divided into a network prefix, subnet ID, and interface suffix.