Network Working Group                                       C. Partridge
Request for Comments: 1726                  BBN Systems and Technologies
Category: Informational                                    F. Kastenholz
                                                           FTP Software
                                                          December 1994

                   Technical Criteria for Choosing
                    IP The Next Generation (IPng)

Status of this Memo

  This memo provides information for the Internet community.  This memo
  does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of
  this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

  This document was submitted to the IPng Area in response to RFC 1550.
  Publication of this document does not imply acceptance by the IPng
  Area of any ideas expressed within.  Comments should be submitted to
  the [email protected] mailing list.  This RFC specifies
  criteria related to mobility for consideration in design and
  selection of the Next Generation of IP.

Table of Contents

 1.        Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
 2.        Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
 3.        Note on Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
 4.        General Principles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   4.1     Architectural Simplicity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   4.2     One Protocol to Bind Them All . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   4.3     Live Long . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4.4     Live Long AND Prosper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   4.5     Co-operative Anarchy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
 5.        Criteria. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   5.1     Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   5.2     Topological Flexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   5.3     Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   5.4     Robust Service. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
   5.5     Transition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   5.6     Media Independence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   5.7     Unreliable Datagram Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   5.8     Configuration, Administration, and Operation. . . . . . . 16
   5.9     Secure Operation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   5.10    Unique Naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
   5.11    Access. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   5.12    Multicast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20



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   5.13    Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   5.13.1  Algorithms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   5.13.2  Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   5.13.3  Data Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   5.13.4  Packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   5.14    Network Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
   5.15    Support for Mobility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
   5.16    Control Protocol. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
   5.17    Private Networks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
 6.        Things We Chose Not to Require. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
   6.1     Fragmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
   6.2     IP Header Checksum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
   6.3     Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   6.4     Network Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   6.5     Accounting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   6.6     Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
   6.6.1   Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
   6.6.2   Policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
   6.6.3   QOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
   6.6.4   Feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
   6.6.5   Stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
   6.6.6   Multicast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
 7.       References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
 8.        Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
 9.        Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
10.        Authors' Addresses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

1. Introduction

  This version of this memo was commissioned by the IPng area of the
  IETF in order to define a set of criteria to be used in evaluating
  the protocols being proposed for adoption as the next generation of
  IP.

  The criteria presented here were culled from several sources,
  including "IP Version 7" [1], "IESG Deliberations on Routing and
  Addressing" [2], "Towards the Future Internet Architecture" [3], the
  IPng Requirements BOF held at the Washington D.C. IETF Meeting in
  December of 1992, the IPng Working Group meeting at the Seattle IETF
  meeting in March 1994, the discussions held on the Big-Internet
  mailing list ([email protected], send requests to join to
  [email protected]), discussions with the IPng Area
  Directors and Directorate, and the mailing lists devoted to the
  individual IPng efforts.

  This document presumes that a new IP-layer protocol is actually
  desired. There is some discussion in the community as to whether we
  can extend the life of IPv4 for a significant amount of time by



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  better engineering of, e.g., routing protocols, or we should develop
  IPng now.  This question is not addressed in this document.

  We would like to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of literally
  hundreds of people who shared their views and insights with us.
  However, this memo is solely the personal opinion of the authors and
  in no way represents, nor should it be construed as representing, the
  opinion of the ISOC, the IAB, the IRTF, the IESG, the IETF, the
  Internet community as a whole, nor the authors' respective employers.

2. Goals

  We believe that by developing a list of criteria for evaluating
  proposals for IP The Next Generation (IPng), the IETF will make it
  easier for developers of proposals to prioritize their work and
  efforts and make reasoned choices as to where they should spend
  relatively more and less time.  Furthermore, a list of criteria may
  help the IETF community determine which proposals are serious
  contenders for a next generation IP, and which proposals are
  insufficient to the task.  Note that these criteria are probably not
  sufficient to make final decisions about which proposal is best.
  Questions such as whether to trade a little performance (e.g.,
  packets per second routed) for slightly more functionality (e.g.,
  more flexible routing) cannot be easily addressed by a simple list of
  criteria.  However, at minimum, we believe that protocols that meet
  these criteria are capable of serving as the future IPng.

  This set of criteria originally began as an ordered list, with the
  goal of ranking the importance of various criteria.  Eventually, the
  layout evolved into the current form, where each criterion was
  presented without weighting, but a time frame, indicating
  approximately when a specific criterion, or feature of a criterion,
  should be available was added to the specification.

  We have attempted to state the criteria in the form of goals or
  requirements and not demand specific engineering solutions.  For
  example, there has been talk in the community of making route
  aggregation a requirement.  We believe that route aggregation is not,
  in and of itself, a requirement but rather one part of a solution to
  the real problem of scaling to some very large, complex topology.
  Therefore, route aggregation is NOT listed as a requirement; instead,
  the more general functional goal of having the routing scale is
  listed instead of the particular mechanism of route aggregation.

  In determining the relative timing of the various criteria, we have
  had two guiding principles.  First, IPng must offer an internetwork
  service akin to that of IPv4, but improved to handle the well-known
  and widely-understood problems of scaling the Internet architecture



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  to more end-points and an ever increasing range of bandwidths.
  Second, it must be desirable for users and network managers to
  upgrade their equipment to support IPng.  At a minimum, this second
  point implies that there must be a straightforward way to transition
  systems from IPv4 to IPng.  But it also strongly suggests that IPng
  should offer features that IPv4 does not; new features provide a
  motivation to deploy IPng more quickly.

3. Note on Terminology

  The existing proposals tend distinguish between end-point
  identification of, e.g., individual hosts, and topological addresses
  of network attachment points.  In this memo we do not make that
  distinction. We use the term "address" as it is currently used in
  IPv4; i.e., for both the identification of a particular endpoint or
  host AND as the topological address of a point on the network. We
  presume that if the endpoint/ address split remains, the proposals
  will make the proper distinctions with respect to the criteria
  enumerated below.

4. General Principles

4.1 Architectural Simplicity

        In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not
        when there is no longer anything to add, but when there
        is no longer anything to take away.

                                         Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  We believe that many communications functions are more appropriately
  performed at protocol layers other than the IP layer.  We see
  protocol stacks as hourglass-shaped, with IPng in the middle, or
  waist, of the hourglass.  As such, essentially all higher-layer
  protocols make use of and rely upon IPng.  Similarly IPng, by virtue
  of its position in the "protocol hourglass" encompasses a wide
  variety of lower-layer protocols.  When IPng does not perform a
  particular function or provide a certain service, it should not get
  in the way of the other elements of the protocol stack which may well
  wish to perform the function.

4.2 One Protocol to Bind Them All

  One of the most important aspects of The Internet is that it provides
  global IP-layer connectivity. The IP layer provides the point of
  commonality among all of the nodes on the Internet. In effect, the
  main goal of the Internet is to provide an IP Connectivity Service to
  all who wish it.



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  This does NOT say that the Internet is a One-Protocol Internet. The
  Internet is today, and shall remain in the future, a Multi-Protocol
  Internet.  Multi-Protocol operations are required to allow for
  continued testing, experimentation, and development and because
  service providers' customers clearly want to be able to run protocols
  such as CLNP, DECNET, and Novell over their Internet connections.

4.3 Live Long

  It is very difficult to change a protocol as central to the workings
  of the Internet as IP. Even more problematic is changing such a
  protocol frequently.  This simply can not be done. We believe that it
  is impossible to expect the community to make significant, non-
  backward compatible changes to the IP layer more often than once
  every 10-15 years. In order to be conservative, we strongly urge
  protocol developers to consider what the Internet will look like in
  20 years and design their protocols to fit that vision.

  As a data point, the SNMP community has had great difficulty moving
  from SNMPv1 to SNMPv2.  Frequent changes in software are hard.

4.4 Live Long AND Prosper

  We believe that simply allowing for bigger addresses and more
  efficient routing is not enough of a benefit to encourage vendors,
  service providers, and users to switch to IPng, with its attendant
  disruptions of service, etc.  These problems can be solved much more
  simply with faster routers, balkanization of the Internet address
  space, and other hacks.

  We believe that there must be positive functional or operational
  benefits to switching to IPng.

  In other words, IPng must be able to live for a long time AND it must
  allow the Internet to prosper and to grow to serve new applications
  and user needs.

4.5 Co-operative Anarchy

  A major contributor to the Internet's success is the fact that there
  is no single, centralized, point of control or promulgator of policy
  for the entire network.  This allows individual constituents of the
  network to tailor their own networks, environments, and policies to
  suit their own needs.  The individual constituents must cooperate
  only to the degree necessary to ensure that they interoperate.






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  We believe that this decentralized and decoupled nature of the
  Internet must be preserved.  Only a minimum amount of centralization
  or forced cooperation will be tolerated by the community as a whole.

  We also believe that there are some tangible benefits to this
  decoupled nature. For example,

  * It is easier to experiment with new protocols and services and then
    roll out intermediate and final results in a controlled fashion.
  * By eliminating a single point of control, a single point of failure
    is also eliminated, making it much less likely that the entire
    network will fail.
  * It allows the administrative tasks for the network to be more
    widely distributed.

  An example of the benefits of this "Cooperative Anarchy" can be seen
  in the benefits derived from using the Domain Naming System over the
  original HOSTS.TXT system.

5. Criteria

  This section enumerates the criteria against which we suggest the IP
  The Next Generation proposals be evaluated.

  Each criterion is presented in its own section. The first paragraph
  of each section is a short, one or two sentence statement of the
  criterion.  Additional paragraphs then explain the criterion in more
  detail, clarify what it does and does not say and provide some
  indication of its relative importance.

  Also, each criterion includes a subsection called "Time Frame".  This
  is intended to give a rough indication of when the authors believe
  that the particular criterion will become "important".  We believe
  that if an element of technology is significant enough to include in
  this document then we probably understand the technology enough to
  predict how important that technology will be.  In general, these
  time frames indicate that, within the desired time frame, we should
  be able to get an understanding of how the feature will be added to a
  protocol, perhaps after discussions with the engineers doing the
  development.  Time Frame is not a deployment schedule since
  deployment schedules depend on non-technical issues, such as vendors
  determining whether a market exists, users fitting new releases into
  their systems, and so on.








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5.1 Scale

  CRITERION
     The IPng Protocol must scale to allow the identification and
     addressing of at least 10**12 end systems (and preferably much
     more).  The IPng Protocol, and its associated routing protocols
     and architecture must allow for at least 10**9 individual networks
     (and preferably more).  The routing schemes must scale at a rate
     that is less than the square root of the number of constituent
     networks [10].

  DISCUSSION
     The initial, motivating, purpose of the IPng effort is to allow
     the Internet to grow beyond the size constraints imposed by the
     current IPv4 addressing and routing technologies.

     Both aspects of scaling are important.  If we can't route then
     connecting all these hosts is worthless, but without connected
     hosts, there's no point in routing, so we must scale in both
     directions.

     In any proposal, particular attention must be paid to describing
     the routing hierarchy, how the routing and addressing will be
     organized, how different layers of the routing interact, and the
     relationship between addressing and routing.

     Particular attention must be paid to describing what happens when
     the size of the network approaches these limits. How are network,
     forwarding, and routing performance affected? Does performance
     fall off or does the network simply stop as the limit is neared.

     This criterion is the essential problem motivating the transition
     to IPng.  If the proposed protocol does not satisfy this criteria,
     there is no point in considering it.

     We note that one of the white papers solicited for the IPng
     process [5] indicates that 10**12 end nodes is a reasonable
     estimate based on the expected number of homes in the world and
     adding two orders of magnitude for "safety".  However, this white
     paper treats each home in the world as an end-node of a world-wide
     Internet.  We believe that each home in the world will in fact be
     a network of the world-wide Internet.  Therefore, if we take [5]'s
     derivation of 10**12 as accurate, and change their assumption that
     a home will be an end-node to a home being a network, we may
     expect that there will be the need to support at least 10**12
     networks, with the possibility of supporting up to 10**15 end-
     nodes.




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  Time Frame
     Any IPng proposal should be able to show immediately that it has
     an architecture for the needed routing protocols, addressing
     schemes, abstraction techniques, algorithms, data structures, and
     so on that can support growth to the required scales.

     Actual development, specification, and deployment of the needed
     protocols can be deferred until IPng deployment has extended far
     enough to require such protocols.  A proposed IPng should be able
     to demonstrate ahead of time that it can scale as needed.

5.2 Topological Flexibility

  CRITERION
     The routing architecture and protocols of IPng must allow for many
     different network topologies.  The routing architecture and
     protocols must not assume that the network's physical structure is
     a tree.

  DISCUSSION
     As the Internet becomes ever more global and ubiquitous, it will
     develop new and different topologies. We already see cases where
     the network hierarchy is very "broad" with many subnetworks, each
     with only a few hosts and where it is very "narrow", with few
     subnetworks each with many hosts.  We can expect these and other
     topological forms in the future.  Furthermore, since we expect
     that IPng will allow for many more levels of hierarchy than are
     allowed under IPv4, we can expect very "tall" and very "short"
     topologies as well.

     Constituent organizations of the Internet should be allowed to
     structure their internal topologies in any manner they see fit.
     Within reasonable implementation limits, organizations should be
     allowed to structure their addressing in any manner.  We
     specifically wish to point out that if the network's topology or
     addressing is hierarchical, constituent organizations should be
     able to allocate to themselves as many levels of hierarchy as they
     wish.

     It is very possible that the diameter of the Internet will grow to
     be extremely large; perhaps larger than 256 hops.

     Neither the current, nor the future, Internet will be physically
     structured as a tree, nor can we assume that connectivity can
     occur only between certain points in the graph.  The routing and
     addressing architectures must allow for multiply connected
     networks and be able to utilize multiple paths for any reason,
     including redundancy, load sharing, type- and quality-of-service



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     differentiation.

  Time Frame
     We believe that Topological Flexibility is an inherent element of
     a protocol and therefore should be immediately demonstrable in an
     IPng proposal.

5.3 Performance

  CRITERION
     A state of the art, commercial grade router must be able to
     process and forward IPng traffic at speeds capable of fully
     utilizing common, commercially available, high-speed media at the
     time.  Furthermore, at a minimum, a host must be able to achieve
     data transfer rates with IPng comparable to the rates achieved
     with IPv4, using similar levels of host resources.

  DISCUSSION
     Network media speeds are constantly increasing.  It is essential
     that the Internet's switching elements (routers) be able to keep
     up with the media speeds.

     We limit this requirement to commercially available routers and
     media.  If some network site can obtain a particular media
     technology "off the shelf", then it should also be able to obtain
     the needed routing technology "off the shelf." One can always go
     into some laboratory or research center and find newer, faster,
     technologies for network media and for routing.  We do believe,
     however, that IPng should be routable at a speed sufficient to
     fully utilize the fastest available media, though that might
     require specially built, custom, devices.

     We expect that more and more services will be available over the
     Internet. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to expect that the
     ratio of "local" traffic (i.e., the traffic that stays on one's
     local network) to "export" traffic (i.e., traffic destined to or
     sourced from a network other than one's own local network) will
     change, and the percent of export traffic will increase.

     We note that the host performance requirement should not be taken
     to imply that IPng need only be as good as IPv4.  If an IPng
     candidate can achieve better performance with equivalent resources
     (or equivalent transfer rates with fewer resources) vis-a-vis IPv4
     then so much the better.  We also observe that many researchers
     believe that a proper IPng router should be capable of routing
     IPng traffic over links at speeds that are capable of fully
     utilizing an ATM switch on the link.




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     Some developments indicate that the use of very high speed point-
     to-point connections may become commonplace.  In particular, [5]
     indicates that OC-3 speeds may be widely used in the Cable TV
     Industry and there may be many OC-3 speed lines connecting to
     central switching elements.

     Processing of the IPng header, and subsequent headers (such as the
     transport header), can be made more efficient by aligning fields
     on their natural boundaries and making header lengths integral
     multiples of typical word lengths (32, 64, and 128 bits have been
     suggested) in order to preserve alignment in following headers.

     We point out that optimizing the header's fields and lengths only
     to today's processors may not be sufficient for the long term.
     Processor word and cache-line lengths, and memory widths are
     constantly increasing.  In doing header optimizations, the
     designer should predict word-widths one or two CPU generations
     into the future and optimize accordingly. If IPv4 and TCP had been
     optimized for processors common when they were designed, they
     would be very efficient for 6502s and Z-80s.

  Time Frame
     An IPng proposal must provide a plausible argument of how it will
     scale up in performance.  (Obviously no one can completely predict
     the future, but the idea is to illustrate that if technology
     trends in processor performance and memory performance continue,
     and perhaps using techniques like parallelism, there is reason to
     believe the proposed IPng will scale as technology scales).

5.4 Robust Service

  CRITERION
     The network service and its associated routing and control
     protocols must be robust.

  DISCUSSION
     Murphy's Law applies to networking.  Any proposed IPng protocol
     must be well-behaved in the face of malformed packets, mis-
     information, and occasional failures of links, routers and hosts.
     IPng should perform gracefully in response to willful management
     and configuration mistakes (i.e., service outages should be
     minimized).

     Putting this requirement another way, IPng must make it possible
     to continue the Internet tradition of being conservative in what
     is sent, but liberal in what one is willing to receive.





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     We note that IPv4 is reasonably robust and any proposed IPng must
     be at least as robust as IPv4.

     Hostile attacks on the network layer and Byzantine failure modes
     must be dealt with in a safe and graceful manner.

     We note that Robust Service is, in some form, a part of security
     and vice-versa.

     The detrimental effects of failures, errors, buggy
     implementations, and misconfigurations must be localized as much
     as possible.  For example, misconfiguring a workstation's IP
     Address should not break the routing protocols.  in the event of
     misconfigurations, IPng must to be able to detect and at least
     warn, if not work around, any misconfigurations.

     Due to its size, complexity, decentralized administration, error-
     prone users and administrators, and so on, The Internet is a very
     hostile environment. If a protocol can not be used in such a
     hostile environment then it is not suitable for use in the
     Internet.

     Some predictions have been made that, as the Internet grows and as
     more and more technically less-sophisticated sites get connected,
     there will be more failures in the network.  These failures may be
     a combination of simple size; if the size of the network goes up
     by a factor of n, then the total number of failures in the network
     can be expected to increase by some function of n.  Also, as the
     network's users become less sophisticated, it can be assumed that
     they will make more, innocent and well meaning, mistakes, either
     in configuration or use of their systems.

     The IPng protocols should be able to continue operating in an
     environment that suffers more, total, outages than we are
     currently used to.  Similarly, the protocols must protect the
     general population from errors (either of omission or commission)
     made by individual users and sites.

  Time Frame
     We believe that the elements of Robust Service should be available
     immediately in the protocol with two exceptions.

     The security aspects of Robust Service are, in fact, described
     elsewhere in this document.







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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


     Protection against Byzantine failure modes is not needed
     immediately.  A proposed architecture for it should be done
     immediately.  Prototype development should be completed in 12-18
     months, with final deployment as needed.

5.5 Transition

  CRITERION
     The protocol must have a straightforward transition plan from the
     current IPv4.

  DISCUSSION
     A smooth, orderly, transition from IPv4 to IPng is needed.  If we
     can't transition to the new protocol, then no matter how wonderful
     it is, we'll never get to it.

     We believe that it is not possible to have a "flag-day" form of
     transition in which all hosts and routers must change over at
     once. The size, complexity, and distributed administration of the
     Internet make such a cutover impossible.

     Rather, IPng will need to co-exist with IPv4 for some period of
     time.  There are a number of ways to achieve this co-existence
     such as requiring hosts to support two stacks, converting between
     protocols, or using backward compatible extensions to IPv4.  Each
     scheme has its strengths and weaknesses, which have to be weighed.

     Furthermore, we note that, in all probability, there will be IPv4
     hosts on the Internet effectively forever.  IPng must provide
     mechanisms to allow these hosts to communicate, even after IPng
     has become the dominant network layer protocol in the Internet.

     The absence of a rational and well-defined transition plan is not
     acceptable.  Indeed, the difficulty of running a network that is
     transitioning from IPv4 to IPng must be minimized.  (A good target
     is that running a mixed IPv4-IPng network should be no more and
     preferably less difficult than running IPv4 in parallel with
     existing non-IP protocols).

     Furthermore, a network in transition must still be robust.  IPng
     schemes which maximize stability and connectivity in mixed IPv4-
     IPng networks are preferred.

     Finally, IPng is expected to evolve over time and therefore, it
     must be possible to have multiple versions of IPng, some in
     production use, some in experimental, developmental, or evaluation
     use, to coexist on the network.  Transition plans must address
     this issue.



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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


     The transition plan must address the following general areas of
     the Internet's infrastructure:

        Host Protocols and Software
        Router Protocols and Software
        Security and Authentication
        Domain Name System
        Network Management
        Operations Tools (e.g., Ping and Traceroute)
        Operations and Administration procedures

     The impact on protocols which use IP addresses as data (e.g., DNS,
     distributed file systems, SNMP and FTP) must be specifically
     addressed.

     The transition plan should address the issue of cost distribution.
     That is, it should identify what tasks are required of the service
     providers, of the end users, of the backbones and so on.

  Time Frame
     A transition plan is required immediately.

5.6 Media Independence

  CRITERION
     The protocol must work across an internetwork of many different
     LAN, MAN, and WAN media, with individual link speeds ranging from
     a ones-of-bits per second to hundreds of gigabits per second.
     Multiple-access and point-to-point media must be supported, as
     must media supporting both switched and permanent circuits.

  DISCUSSION
     The joy of IP is that it works over just about anything.  This
     generality must be preserved.  The ease of adding new
     technologies, and ability to continue operating with old
     technologies must be maintained.

     We believe this range of speed is right for the next twenty years,
     though we may wish to require terabit performance at the high-end.
     We believe that, at a minimum, media running at 500 gigabits per
     second will be commonly available within 10 years.  The low end of
     the link-speed range is based on the speed of systems like pagers
     and ELF (ELF connects to submerged submarines and has a "speed" on
     the order of <10 characters per second).

     By switched circuits we mean both "permanent" connections such as
     X.25 and Frame Relay services AND "temporary" types of dialup
     connections similar to today's SLIP and dialup PPP services, and



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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


     perhaps, ATM SVCs.  The latter form of connection implies that
     dynamic network access (i.e., the ability to unplug a machine,
     move it to a different point on the network topology, and plug it
     back in, possibly with a changed IPng address) is required. We
     note that this is an aspect of mobility.

     By work, we mean we have hopes that a stream of IPng datagrams
     (whether from one source, or many) can come close to filling the
     link at high speeds, but also scales gracefully to low speeds.

     Many network media are multi-protocol.  It is essential that IPng
     be able to peacefully co-exist on such media with other protocols.
     Routers and hosts must be able to discriminate among the protocols
     that might be present on such a medium.  For example, on an
     Ethernet, a specific, IPng Ethernet Type value might be called
     for; or the old IPv4 Ethernet type is used and the first four
     (version number in the old IPv4 header) bits would distinguish
     between IPv4 and IPng.

     Different media have different MAC address formats and schemes.
     It must be possible for a node to dynamically determine the MAC
     address of a node given that node's IP address.  We explicitly
     prohibit using static, manually configured mappings as the
     standard approach.

     Another aspect of this criterion is that many different MTUs will
     be found in an IPng internetwork.  An IPng must be able to operate
     in such a multi-MTU environment.  It must be able to adapt to the
     MTUs of the physical media over which it operates.  Two possible
     techniques for dealing with this are path MTU discovery and
     fragmentation and reassembly; other techniques might certainly be
     developed.

     We note that, as of this writing (mid 1994), ATM seems to be set
     to become a major network media technology.  Any IPng should be
     designed to operate over ATM.  However, IPng still must be able to
     operate over other, more "traditional" network media.
     Furthermore, a host on an ATM network must be able to interoperate
     with a host on another, non-ATM, medium, with no more difficulty
     or complexity than hosts on different media can interoperate today
     using IPv4.

     IPng must be able to deal both with "dumb" media, such as we have
     today, and newer, more intelligent, media.  In particular, IPng
     functions must be able to exist harmoniously with lower-layer
     realizations of the same, or similar, functions. Routing and
     resource management are two areas where designers should pay
     particular attention.  Some subnetwork technologies may include



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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


     integral accounting and billing capabilities, and IPng must
     provide the correct control information to such subnetworks.

  Time Frame
     Specifications for current media encapsulations (i.e., all
     encapsulations that are currently Proposed standards, or higher,
     in the IETF) are required immediately.  These specifications must
     include any auxiliary protocols needed (such as an address
     resolution mechanism for Ethernet or the link control protocol for
     PPP).  A general 'guide' should also be available immediately to
     help others develop additional media encapsulations.  Other,
     newer, encapsulations can be developed as the need becomes
     apparent.

     Van Jacobson-like header compression should be shown immediately,
     as should any other aspects of very-low-speed media.  Similarly,
     any specific aspects of high-speed media should be shown
     immediately.

5.7 Unreliable Datagram Service

  CRITERION
     The protocol must support an unreliable datagram delivery service.

  DISCUSSION
     We like IP's datagram service and it seems to work very well.  So
     we must keep it.  In particular, the ability, within IPv4, to send
     an independent datagram, without prearrangement, is extremely
     valuable (in fact, may be required for some applications such as
     SNMP) and must be retained.

     Furthermore, the design principle that says that we can take any
     datagram and throw it away with no warning or other action, or
     take any router and turn it off with no warning, and have datagram
     traffic still work, is very powerful.  This vastly enhances the
     robustness of the network and vastly eases administration and
     maintenance of the network.  It also vastly simplifies the design
     and implementation of software [14].

     Furthermore, the Unreliable Datagram Service should support some
     minimal level of service; something that is approximately
     equivalent to IPv4 service.  This has two functions; it eases the
     task of IPv4/IPng translating systems in mapping IPv4 traffic to
     IPng and vice versa, and it simplifies the task of fitting IPng
     into small, limited environments such as boot ROMs.

  Time Frame
     Unreliable Datagram Service must be available immediately.



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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


5.8 Configuration, Administration, and Operation

  CRITERION
     The protocol must permit easy and largely distributed
     configuration and operation. Automatic configuration of hosts and
     routers is required.

  DISCUSSION
     People complain that IP is hard to manage.  We cannot plug and
     play.  We must fix that problem.

     We do note that fully automated configuration, especially for
     large, complex networks, is still a topic of research.  Our
     concern is mostly for small and medium sized, less complex,
     networks; places where the essential knowledge and skills would
     not be as readily available.

     In dealing with this criterion, address assignment and delegation
     procedures and restrictions should be addressed by the proposal.
     Furthermore, "ownership" of addresses (e.g., user or service
     provider) has recently become a concern and the issue should be
     addressed.

     We require that a node be able to dynamically obtain all of its
     operational, IP-level parameters at boot time via a dynamic
     configuration mechanism.

     A host must be able to dynamically discover routers on the host's
     local network.  Ideally, the information which a host learns via
     this mechanism would also allow the host to make a rational
     selection of which first-hop router to send any given packet to.
     IPng must not mandate that users or administrators manually
     configure first-hop routers into hosts.

     Also, a strength of IPv4 has been its ability to be used on
     isolated subnets.  IPng hosts must be able to work on networks
     without routers present.

     Additional elements of this criterion are:

     * Ease of address allocation.
     * Ease of changing the topology of the network within a particular
       routing domain.
     * Ease of changing network provider.
     * Ease of (re)configuring host/endpoint parameters such as
       addressing and identification.
     * Ease of (re)configuring router parameters such as addressing and
       identification.



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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


     * Address allocation and assignment authority must be delegated as
       far 'down' the administrative hierarchy as possible.

     The requirements of this section apply only to IPng and its
     supporting protocols (such as for routing, address resolution, and
     network-layer control).  Specifically, as far as IPng is
     concerned, we are concerned only with how routers and hosts get
     their configuration information.

     We note that in general, automatic configuration of hosts is a
     large and complex problem and getting the configuration
     information into hosts and routers is only one, small, piece of
     the problem.  A large amount of additional, non-Internet-layer
     work is needed in order to be able to do "plug-and-play"
     networking.  Other aspects of "plug-and-play" networking include
     things like: Autoregistration of new nodes with DNS, configuring
     security service systems (e.g., Kerberos), setting up email relays
     and mail servers, locating network resources, adding entries to
     NFS export files, and so on.  To a large degree, these
     capabilities do not have any dependence on the IPng protocol
     (other than, perhaps, the format of addresses).

     We require that any IPng proposal not impede or prevent, in any
     way, the development of "plug-and-play" network configuration
     technologies.

     Automatic configuration of network nodes must not prevent users or
     administrators from also being able to manually configure their
     systems.

  Time Frame
     A method for plug and play on small subnets is immediately
     required.

     We believe that this is an extremely critical area for any IPng as
     a major complaint of the IP community as a whole is the difficulty
     in administering large IP networks.  Furthermore, ease of
     installation is likely to speed the deployment of IPng.

5.9 Secure Operation

  CRITERION
     IPng must provide a secure network layer.

  DISCUSSION
     We need to be sure that we have not created a network that is a
     cracker's playground.




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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


     In order to meet the Robustness criterion, some elements of what
     is commonly shrugged off as "security" are needed; e.g., to prevent
     a villain from injecting bogus routing packets, and destroying the
     routing system within the network.  This criterion covers those
     aspects of security that are not needed to provide the Robustness
     criterion.

     Another aspect of security is non-repudiation of origin.  In order
     to adequately support the expected need for simple accounting, we
     believe that this is a necessary feature.

     In order to safely support requirements of the commercial world,
     IPng-level security must have capabilities to prevent
     eavesdroppers from monitoring traffic and deducing traffic
     patterns.  This is particularly important in multi-access networks
     such as cable TV networks [5].

     Aspects of security at the IP level to be considered include:

     * Denial of service protections [6],
     * Continuity of operations [6],
     * Precedence and preemption [6],
     * Ability to allow rule-based access control technologies [6]
     * Protection of routing and control-protocol operations [9],
     * Authentication of routing information exchanges, packets, data,
       and sources (e.g., make sure that the routing packet came from a
       router) [9],
     * QOS security (i.e., protection against improper use of network-
       layer resources, functions, and capabilities),
     * Auto-configuration protocol operations in that the host must be
       assured that it is getting its information from proper sources,
     * Traffic pattern confidentiality is strongly desired by several
       communities [9] and [5].

  Time Frame
     Security should be an integral component of any IPng from the
     beginning.

5.10 Unique Naming

  CRITERION
     IPng must assign all IP-Layer objects in the global, ubiquitous,
     Internet unique names.  These names may or may not have any
     location, topology, or routing significance.

  DISCUSSION
     We use the term "Name" in this criterion synonymously with the
     term "End Point Identifier" as used in the NIMROD proposal, or as



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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


     IP Addresses uniquely identify interfaces/hosts in IPv4.  These
     names may or may not carry any routing or topology information.
     See [11] for more discussion on this topic.

     IPng must provide identifiers which are suitable for use as
     globally unique, unambiguous, and ubiquitous names for endpoints,
     nodes, interfaces, and the like.  Every datagram must carry the
     identifier of both its source and its destination (or some method
     must be available to determine these identifiers, given a
     datagram).  We believe that this is required in order to support
     certain accounting functions.

     Other functions and uses of unique names are:

     * To uniquely identify endpoints (thus if the unique name and
       address are not the same, the TCP pseudo-header should include
       the unique name rather than the address)
     * To allow endpoints to change topological location on the network
       (e.g., migrate) without changing their unique names.
     * To give one or more unique names to a node on the network (i.e.,
       one node may have multiple unique names)

     An identifier must refer to one and only one object while that
     object is in existence.  Furthermore, after an object ceases to
     exist, the identifier should be kept unused long enough to ensure
     that any packets containing the identifier have drained out of the
     Internet system, and that other references to the identifier have
     probably been lost.  We note that the term "existence" is as much
     an administrative issue as a technical one.  For example, if a
     workstation is reassigned, given a new IP address and node name,
     and attached to a new subnetwork, is it the same object or not.
     This does argue for a namespace that is relatively large and
     relatively stable.

  Time Frame
     We see this as a fundamental element of the IP layer and it should
     be in the protocol from the beginning.

5.11 Access

  CRITERION
     The protocols that define IPng, its associated protocols (similar
     to ARP and ICMP in IPv4) and the routing protocols (as in OSPF,
     BGP, and RIP for IPv4) must be published as standards track RFCs
     and must satisfy the requirements specified in RFC1310.  These
     documents should be as freely available and redistributable as the
     IPv4 and related RFCs.  There must be no specification-related
     licensing fees for implementing or selling IPng software.



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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


  DISCUSSION
     An essential aspect of the development of the Internet and its
     protocols has been the fact that the protocol specifications are
     freely available to anyone who wishes a copy.  Beyond simply
     minimizing the cost of learning about the technology, the free
     access to specifications has made it easy for researchers and
     developers to easily incorporate portions of old protocol
     specifications in the revised specifications.  This type of easy
     access to the standards documents is required for IPng.

  Time Frame
     An IPng and its related protocols must meet these standards for
     openness before an IPng can be approved.

5.12 Multicast

  CRITERION
     The protocol must support both unicast and multicast packet
     transmission.  Part of the multicast capability is a requirement
     to be able to send to "all IP hosts on a given subnetwork".
     Dynamic and automatic routing of multicasts is also required.

  DISCUSSION
     IPv4 has made heavy use of the ability to multicast requests to
     all IPv4 hosts on a subnet, especially for autoconfiguration.
     This ability must be retained in IPng.

     Unfortunately, IPv4 currently uses the local media broadcast
     address to multicast to all IP hosts.  This behavior is anti-
     social in mixed-protocol networks and should be fixed in IPng.
     There's no good reason for IPng to send to all hosts on a subnet
     when it only wishes to send to all IPng hosts.  The protocol must
     make allowances for media that do not support true multicasting.

     In the past few years, we have begun to deploy support for wide-
     area multicast addressing in the Internet, and it has proved
     valuable.  This capability must not be lost in the transition to
     IPng.

     The ability to restrict the range of a multicast to specific
     networks is also important.  Furthermore, it must be possible to
     "selectively" multicast packets. That is, it must be possible to
     send a multicast to a remote, specific portion or area of the
     Internet (such as a specific network or subnetwork) and then have
     that multicast limited to just that specific area.  Furthermore,
     any given network or subnetwork should be capable of supporting
     2**16 "local" multicast groups, i.e., groups that are not
     propagated to other networks.  See [8].



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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


     It should be noted that addressing -- specifically the syntax and
     semantics of addresses -- has a great impact on the scalability of
     the architecture.

     Currently, large-scale multicasts are routed manually through the
     Internet.  While this is fine for experiments, a "production"
     system requires that multicast-routing be dynamic and automatic.
     Multicast groups must be able to be created and destroyed, hosts
     must be able to join and leave multicast groups and the network
     routing infrastructure must be able to locate new multicast groups
     and destinations and route traffic to those destinations all
     without manual intervention.

     Large, topologically dispersed, multicast groups (with up to 10**6
     participants) must be supported.  Some applications are given in
     [8].

  Time Frame
     Obviously, address formats, algorithms for processing and
     interpreting the multicast addresses must be immediately available
     in IPng.  Broadcast and Multicast transmission/reception of
     packets are required immediately.  Dynamic routing of multicast
     packets must be available within 18 months.

     We believe that Multicast Addressing is vital to support future
     applications such as remote conferencing.  It is also used quite
     heavily in the current Internet for things like service location
     and routing.

5.13 Extensibility

  CRITERION
     The protocol must be extensible; it must be able to evolve to meet
     the future service needs of the Internet. This evolution must be
     achievable without requiring network-wide software upgrades.  IPng
     is expected to evolve over time. As it evolves, it must be able to
     allow different versions to coexist on the same network.

  DISCUSSION
     We do not today know all of the things that we will want the
     Internet to be able to do 10 years from now.  At the same time, it
     is not reasonable to ask users to transition to a new protocol
     with each passing decade.  Thus, we believe that it must be
     possible to extend IPng to support new services and facilities.
     Furthermore, it is essential that any extensions can be
     incrementally deployed to only those systems which desire to use
     them. Systems upgraded in this fashion must still be able to
     communicate with systems which have not been so upgraded.



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RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


     There are several aspects to extensibility:

  5.13.1 Algorithms
        The algorithms used in processing IPng information should be
        decoupled from the protocol itself.  It should be possible to
        change these algorithms without necessarily requiring protocol,
        datastructure, or header changes.

  5.13.2 Headers
        The content of packet headers should be extensible.  As more
        features and functions are required of IPng, it may be
        necessary to add more information to the IPng headers.  We note
        that for IPv4, the use of options has proven less than entirely
        satisfactory since options have tended to be inefficient to
        process.

  5.13.3 Data Structures
        The fundamental data structures of IPng should not be bound
        with the other elements of the protocol.  E.g., things like
        address formats should not be intimately tied with the routing
        and forwarding algorithms in the way that the IPv4 address
        class mechanism was tied to IPv4 routing and forwarding.

  5.13.4 Packets
        It should be possible to add additional packet-types to IPng.
        These could be for, _e._g., new control and/or monitoring
        operations.

     We note that, everything else being equal, having larger,
     oversized, number spaces is preferable to having number spaces
     that are "just large enough".  Larger spaces afford more
     flexibility on the part of network designers and operators and
     allow for further experimentation on the part of the scientists,
     engineers, and developers.  See [7].

  Time Frame
     A framework showing mechanisms for extending the protocol must be
     provided immediately.

5.14 Network Service

  CRITERION
     The protocol must allow the network (routers, intelligent media,
     hosts, and so on) to associate packets with particular service
     classes and provide them with the services specified by those
     classes.





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  DISCUSSION
     For many reasons, such as accounting, security and multimedia, it
     is desirable to treat different packets differently in the
     network.

     For example, multimedia is now on our desktop and will be an
     essential part of future networking.  So we have to find ways to
     support it; and a failure to support it may mean users choose to
     use protocols other than IPng.

     The IETF multicasts have shown that we can currently support
     multimedia over internetworks with some hitches.  If the network
     can be guaranteed to provide the necessary service levels for this
     traffic, we will dramatically increase its success.

     This criterion includes features such as policy-based routing,
     flows, resource reservation, network service technologies, type-
     of-service and quality-of-service and so on.

     In order to properly support commercial provision and use of
     Internetwork service, and account for the use of these services
     (i.e., support the economic principle of "value paid for value
     received") it must be possible to obtain guarantees of service
     levels.  Similarly, if the network can not support a previously
     guaranteed service level, it must report this to those to whom it
     guaranteed the service.

     Network service provisions must be secure.  The network-layer
     security must generally prevent one host from surreptitiously
     obtaining or disrupting the use of resources which another host
     has validly acquired.  (Some security failures are acceptable, but
     the failure rate must be very low and the rate should be
     quantifiable).

     One of the parameters of network service that may be requested
     must be cost-based.

     As far as possible, given the limitations of underlying media and
     IP's model of a robust internet datagram service, real-time,
     mission-critical applications must be supported by IPng [6].

     Users must be able to confirm that they are, in fact, getting the
     services that they have requested.

  Time Frame
     This should be available within 24 months.





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5.15 Support for Mobility

  CRITERION
     The protocol must support mobile hosts, networks and
     internetworks.

  DISCUSSION
     Again, mobility is becoming increasingly important.  Look at the
     portables that everyone is carrying.  Note the strength of the
     Apple commercial showing someone automatically connecting up her
     Powerbook to her computer back in the office.  There have been a
     number of pilot projects showing ways to support mobility in IPv4.
     All have some drawbacks.  But like network service grades, if we
     can support mobility, IPng will have features that will encourage
     transition.

     We use an encompassing definition of "mobility" here.  Mobility
     typically means one of two things to people: 1) Hosts that
     physically move and remain connected (via some wireless datalink)
     with sessions and transport-layer connections remaining 'open' or
     'active' and 2) Disconnecting a host from one spot in the network,
     connecting it back in another arbitrary spot and continuing to
     work.  Both forms are required.

     Reference [6] discusses possible future use of IP-based networks
     in the US Navy's ships, planes, and shore installations.  Their
     basic model is that each ship, plane and shore installation
     represents at least one IP network.  The ship- and plane-based
     networks, obviously, are mobile as these craft move around the
     world. Furthermore, most, if not all, Naval surface combatants
     carry some aircraft (at a minimum, a helicopter or two). So, not
     only must there be mobile networks (the ships that move around),
     but there must be mobile internetworks: the ships carrying the
     aircraft where each aircraft has its own network, which is
     connected to the ship's network and the whole thing is moving.

     There is also the requirement for dynamic mobility; a plane might
     take off from aircraft carrier A and land on carrier B so it
     obviously would want to "connect" to B's network.  This situation
     might be even more complex since the plane might wish to retain
     connectivity to its "home" network; that is, the plane might
     remain connected to the ship-borne networks of both aircraft
     carriers, A and B.

     These requirements are not limited to just the navy.  They apply
     to the civilian and commercial worlds as well.  For example, in
     civil airliners, commercial cargo and passenger ships, trains,
     cars and so on.



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  Time Frame
     The mobility algorithms are stabilizing and we would hope to see
     an IPng mobility framework within a year.

5.16 Control Protocol

  CRITERION
     The protocol must include elementary support for testing and
     debugging networks.

  DISCUSSION
     An important feature of IPv4 is the ICMP and its debugging,
     support, and control features.  Specific ICMP messages that have
     proven extraordinarily useful within IPv4 are Echo Request/Reply
     (a.k.a ping), Destination Unreachable and Redirect.  Functions
     similar to these should be in IPng.

     This criterion explicitly does not concern itself with
     configuration related messages of ICMP.  We believe that these are
     adequately covered by the configuration criterion in this memo.

     One limitation of today's ICMP that should be fixed in IPng's
     control protocol is that more than just the IPng header plus 64
     bits of a failed datagram should be returned in the error message.
     In some situations, this is too little to carry all the critical
     protocol information that indicates why a datagram failed.  At
     minimum, any IPng control protocol should return the entire IPng
     and transport headers (including options or nested headers).

  Time Frame
     Support for these functions is required immediately.

5.17 Private Networks

  CRITERION
     IPng must allow users to build private internetworks on top of the
     basic Internet Infrastructure.  Both private IP-based
     internetworks and private non-IP-based (e.g., CLNP or AppleTalk)
     internetworks must be supported.

  DISCUSSION
     In the current Internet, these capabilities are used by the
     research community to develop new IP services and capabilities
     (e.g., the MBone) and by users to interconnect non-IP islands over
     the Internet (e.g., CLNP and DecNet use in the UK).

     The capability of building networks on top of the Internet have
     been shown to be useful.  Private networks allow the Internet to



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     be extended and modified in ways that 1) were not foreseen by the
     original builders and 2) do not disrupt the day-to-day operations
     of other users.

     We note that, today in the IPv4 Internet, tunneling is widely used
     to provide these capabilities.

     Finally, we note that there might not be any features that
     specifically need to be added to IPng in order to support the
     desired functions (i.e., one might treat a private network protocol
     simply as another IP client protocol, just like TCP or UDP). If
     this is the case, then IPng must not prevent these functions from
     being performed.

  Time Frame
     Some of these capabilities may be required to support other
     criteria (e.g., transition) and as such, the timing of the
     specifications is governed by the other criteria (e.g., immediately
     in the case of transition).  Others may be produced as desired.

6. Things We Chose Not to Require

  This section contains items which we felt should not impact the
  choice of an IPng.  Listing an item here does not mean that a
  protocol MUST NOT do something. It means that the authors do not
  believe that it matters whether the feature is in the protocol or
  not. If a protocol includes one of the items listed here, that's
  cool. If it doesn't; that's cool too. A feature might be necessary in
  order to meet some other criterion.  Our point is merely that the
  feature need not be required for its own sake.

6.1 Fragmentation

  The technology exists for path MTU discovery.  Presumably, IPng will
  continue to provide this technology.  Therefore, we believe that IPng
  Fragmentation and Reassembly, as provided in IPv4, is not necessary.
  We note that fragmentation has been shown to be detrimental to
  network performance and strongly recommend that it be avoided.

6.2 IP Header Checksum

  There has been discussion indicating that the IP Checksum does not
  provide enough error protection to warrant its performance impact.
  The argument states that there is almost always a stronger datalink
  level CRC, and that end-to-end protection is provided by the TCP
  checksum. Therefore we believe that an IPng checksum is not required
  per-se.




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6.3 Firewalls

  Some have requested that IPng include support for firewalls.  The
  authors believe that firewalls are one particular solution to the
  problem of security and, as such, do not consider that support for
  firewalls is a valid requirement for IPng.  (At the same time, we
  would hope that no IPng is hostile to firewalls without offering some
  equivalent security solution).

6.4 Network Management

  Network Management properly is a task to be carried out by additional
  protocols and standards, such as SNMP and its MIBs.  We believe that
  network management, per se, is not an attribute of the IPng protocol.
  Furthermore, network management is viewed as a support, or service,
  function. Network management should be developed to fit IPng and not
  the other way round.

6.5 Accounting

  We believe that accounting, like network management, must be designed
  to fit the IPng protocol, and not the other way round.  Therefore,
  accounting, in and of itself, is not a requirement of IPng.  However,
  there are some facets of the protocol that have been specified to
  make accounting easier, such as non-repudiation of origin under
  security, and the unique naming requirement for sorting datagrams
  into classes.  Note that a parameter of network service that IPng
  must support is cost.

6.6 Routing

  Routing is a very critical part of the Internet.  In fact, the
  Internet Engineering Task Force has a separate Area which is
  chartered to deal only with routing issues.  This Area is separate
  from the more general Internet Area.

  We see that routing is also a critical component of IPng.  There are
  several criteria, such as Scaling, Addressing, and Network Services,
  which are intimately entwined with routing.  In order to stress the
  critical nature and importance of routing, we have chosen to devote a
  separate chapter to specifically enumerating some of the requirements
  and issues that IPng routing must address.  All of these issues, we
  believe, fall out of the general criteria presented in the previous
  chapter.







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  6.6.1 Scale

     First and foremost, the routing architecture must scale to support
     a very large Internet.  Current expectations are for an Internet
     of about 10**9 to 10**12 networks.  The routing architecture must
     be able to deal with networks of this size.  Furthermore, the
     routing architecture must be able to deal with this size without
     requiring massive, global databases and algorithms.  Such
     databases or algorithms would, in effect, be single points of
     failure in the architecture (which is not robust), and because of
     the nature of Internet administration (cooperative anarchy), it
     would be impossible to maintain the needed consistency.

  6.6.2 Policy

     Networks (both transit and non-transit) must be able to set their
     own policies for the types of traffic that they will admit.  The
     routing architecture must make these policies available to the
     network as a whole.  Furthermore, nodes must be able to select
     routes for their traffic based on the advertised policies.

  6.6.3 QOS

     A key element of the network service criteria is that differing
     applications wish to acquire differing grades of network service.
     It is essential that this service information be propagated around
     the network.

  6.6.4 Feedback

     As users select specific routes over which to send their traffic,
     they must be provided feedback from the routing architecture. This
     feedback should allow the user to determine whether the desired
     routes are actually available or not, whether the desired services
     are being provided, and so forth.

     This would allow users to modify their service requirements or
     even change their routes, as needed.

  6.6.5 Stability

     With the addition of additional data into the routing system
     (i.e., routes are based not only on connectivity, as in IPv4, but
     also on policies, service grades, and so on), the stability of the
     routes may suffer.  We offer as evidence the early ARPANET which
     experimented with load-based routing. Routes would remain in flux,
     changing from one saturated link, to another, unused, link.




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     This must not be allowed to happen.  If anything, routes should be
     even more stable under IPng's routing architecture than under the
     current architecture.

  6.6.6 Multicast

     Multicast will be more important in IPng than it is today in IPv4.
     Multicast groups may be very large and very distributed.
     Membership in multicast groups will be very dynamic.  The routing
     architecture must be able to cope with this.

     Furthermore, the routing architecture must be able to build
     multicast routes dynamically, based on factors such as group
     membership, member location, requested and available qualities of
     service, and so on.

7. References

  [1] Internet Architecture Board, "IP Version 7", Draft 8, Work in
      Progress, July, 1992.

  [2] Gross, P., and P. Almquist, "IESG Deliberations on Routing and
      Addressing", RFC 1380, IESG Chair, IESG Internet AD, November
      1992.

  [3] Clark, D., Chapin, L., Cerf, V., Braden, R., and R. Hobby,
      "Toward the Future Internet Architecture", RFC 1287, MIT, BBN,
      CNRI, USC/Information Sciences Institute, UC Davis, December
      1991.

  [4] Dave Clark's paper at SIGCOMM '88 where he pointed out that the
      design of TCP/IP was guided, in large part, by an ordered list of
      requirements.

  [5] Vecchi, M., "IPng Requirements: A Cable Television Industry
      Viewpoint", RFC 1686, Time Warner Cable, August 1994.

  [6] Green, D., Irey, P., Marlow, D. and K. O'Donoghue, "HPN Working
      Group Input to the IPng Requirements Solicitation, RFC 1679,
      NSWC-DD, August 1994.

  [7] Bellovin, S., "On Many Addresses per Host", RFC 1681, AT&T Bell
      Laboratories, August 1994.

  [8] Symington, S., Wood, D., and J. Pullen, "Modelling and Simulation
      Requirements for IPng", RFC 1667, Mitre Corporation and George
      Mason University, August 1994.




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  [9] Internet Architecture Board, "Report of the IAB Workshop on
      Security in the Internet Architecture, RFC 1636, IAB, June 1994.

 [10] Private EMAIL from Tony Li to IPNG Directorate Mailing List, 18
      April 1994 18:42:05.

 [11] Saltzer, J., On the Naming and Binding of Network Destinations",
      RFC 1498, M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science, August 1993.

 [12] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol - DARPA Internet
      Program Protocol Specification", STD 7, RFC 793, DARPA, September
      1981.

 [13] EMAIL from Robert Elz to the Big Internet mailing list,
      approximately 4 May 1994.

 [14] Chiappa, N., "Nimrod and IPng Technical Requirements", Work in
      Progress.

8. Security Considerations

  Security is not directly addressed by this memo.  However, as this
  memo codifies goals for a new generation of network layer protocol,
  the security provided by such a protocol is addressed.  Security has
  been raised as an issue in several of the requirements stated in this
  memo.  Furthermore, a specific requirement for security has been
  made.

9. Acknowledgements

  The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance and input provided
  by the many people who have reviewed and commented upon this
  document.


















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10. Authors' Addresses

  Craig Partridge
  BBN Systems and Technologies
  10 Moulton St.
  Cambridge, MA 02138

  EMail: [email protected]


  Frank Kastenholz
  FTP Software, Inc.
  2 High St.
  North Andover, MA, 01845-2620 USA

  EMail: [email protected]



































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