The role of Internet Protocol (IP) is becoming more and more problematic especially with the new requirements of mobility and multihoming. Host Identity protocol (HIP) defines a new protocol between the network and transport layers in order to provide a better management to those requirements. The protocol defines a new namespace based on cryptographic identifiers which enable the IP address roles dissociation. Those new identifiers identify hosts rather than IP addresses. Because HIP is a quite recent protocol, we propose to present an experimental evaluation of its basic characteristics