Network Working Group                                         R. Skelton
Request for Comments: 1673                                          EPRI
Category: Informational                                      August 1994


          Electric Power Research Institute Comments on 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 IETF 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.

Executive Summary

  The question of the future of the Internet protocol (IP) is an issue
  of national if not international concern. It is critical to the
  building of a National Information Infrastructure, comparable to the
  adoption of basic standards for the industrial era such as railways,
  highways and electricity.

  The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is a non-profit
  organization, with 700 voluntary utility members, managing a
  technical research and development program for the electric utility
  industry to improve power production, distribution and use. The
  electric power industry is a major user of computing and
  communications and is fully committed to open systems.

  While the industry is today a heavy user of the Internet Protocol
  Suite (IPS) it is following a long term strategy based on
  international standards developed by ISO and CCITT and national
  standards developed by the IEEE, ANSI and other standards bodies that
  employ formal review and voting procedures.

  This strategy is based on a survey of needs in all aspects of the
  electrical power supply enterprise.  It concluded that these needs
  are met more effectively by the current suite of OSI protocols and
  international standards under development. Therefore, EPRI developed
  the Utility Communications Architecture (UCA) specification for
  communications and the Database Access Integrated Services
  specification for data exchange both based on the OSI model and



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RFC 1673                 EPRI Comments on IPng               August 1994


  international standards.

  These specifications have been incorporated into the Industry
  Government Open Systems Specification (IGOSS).  They are receiving
  favorable response and application by the industry and its suppliers
  as well as the support of the natural gas and waterworks industries.

  The issues facing the Internet community concerning growth and the
  address and routing limitations of IP in particular, provide an ideal
  opportunity for creating the  national uniform information transport
  superhighway. This is critical to the NII Agenda and the only
  proposal that will achieve this goal is one that is acceptable from
  both private and public sector viewpoints with both a national and an
  international perspective.

  EPRI also believes it is critically important that new requirements
  need to be achieved by convergence of efforts to develop additional
  standards.  Security, directory services, network management, and the
  ability to support real-time applications are four examples of where
  new convergent standards efforts are required.

  Just as society could not in the past accept multiple standards for
  the gauge of the nation's railways,  we can no longer accept multiple
  standards for information transport.

Engineering Considerations

  1. Mandatory Requirement.

     Inter networking must evolve to provide an industrial strength
     computing and communications environment for multiple uses of
     globally connected network resources.  Specifically the underlying
     transport must provide high integrity support for upper layer
     industrial OSI applications including but not limited to MMS  and
     TP. Use of interface layers such as RFC 1006 is not acceptable
     except as a transition strategy.

  2. Basic Requirements.

     - Scaleability
       The addressing scheme must have essentially an unlimited address
       space to encompass an arbitrarily large number of information
       objects.  Specifically it must solve the fundamental limitations
       of 32 bit formats, a format for 20 octets and above is considered
       suitable.






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RFC 1673                 EPRI Comments on IPng               August 1994


     - Routing table economy
       Network addressing must achieve significant economy in routing
       database size with very large networks.

     - Support for the existing Internet
       The existing internetworking paradigm and existing OSI and IPS
       applications are to be supported.

  3. Key Engineering Considerations - A pragmatic solution.

     - Available now
       The solution must be available now using mature, internationally
       agreed standards and off-the-shelf implementations for hosts and
       routers.  The solution must leverage existing investments in
       standards development, deployment and experience while at the
       same time provide for all basic requirements.

     - Ease of Transition
       Any solution must provide an evolutionary transition path using
       an OSI.

     - IP dual network layer strategy.
       This must be achievable without modifications to existing
       inter-domain routing protocols while providing the ability to
       support proprietary protocols such as IPX and Appletalk.  The
       scheme must provide the ability to encompass other addressing
       schemes such as X.121 and E.164.  Existing SNMP and CMIP MIBs
       must be applicable and available.  Internet domain names need
       to be retained.

     - Routing effectiveness
       This key objective requires features such as route aggregation,
       service selection, and low frequency host advertisements; host
       routing intelligence should not be required.

     - Flexible Efficient Administration
       Operational needs will need to be met in an economic and
       flexible manner.  Addressing allocations can be either
       geographically based or based on carrier ID or both and will be
       administered by policy not network topology.  Simplified and
       robust configurability is required which includes the ability to
       identify resources e.g., multi-homed hosts and applications,
       instead of interfaces.

     - Mobility
       Dynamic addressing is required where hosts have the ability to
       learn their own network address with the minimum of human
       intervention.



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RFC 1673                 EPRI Comments on IPng               August 1994


Security Considerations

  Security isses are not discussed in this memo.

Author's Address

  Ron Skelton
  Member of Technical Staff
  Advanced IT Group
  Electric Power Research Institute
  Palo Alto CA 94303

  EMail: [email protected]






































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