Internet Area
Director(s):
o Stev Knowles: stev@ftp.com
o Dave Piscitello: dave@mail.bellcore.com
Area Summary reported by Stev Knowles/FTP Software and Dave
Piscitello/Bellcore
Working groups in the Internet Area are actively involved in the
development of Internet standards for:
o IP and multi-protocol operation over emerging wide area
technologies (ATM, SMDS, Frame Relay) and point-to-point
technologies (including narrowband ISDN).
o Development of a ``next generation'' IP; i.e., a replacement
protocol and addressing/routing architecture for IPv4.
o Miscellaneous (Network Address Translation, Stream Technology 2).
The following BOFs and working groups in the Internet Area met during
the Amsterdam IETF:
o Extensions to OSI for use in the Internet BOF (OSIEXTND)
o Internet Stream Protocol V2 BOF (ST2)
o IPng Decision Process BOF (IPDECIDE)
o Network Address Translators BOF (NAT)
o IP Over Asynchronous Transfer Mode Working Group (ATM)
o IP Over Large Public Data Networks Working Group (IPLPDN)
o P. Internet Protocol Working Group (PIP)
o Point-to-Point Protocol Extensions Working Group (PPPEXT)
o Simple Internet Protocol Working Group (SIP)
o TCP/UDP Over CLNP-Addressed Networks Working Group (TUBA)
o TP/IX Working Group (TPIX)
The IPLPDN and PPPEXT Working Groups met individually as well as
jointly.
Internet Stream Protocol V2 BOF (ST2)
The ST2 BOF resulted in two decisions. The first was that a working
group should be formed to update the existing ST-II specification
(RFC 1190). The main motivation was to correct errors in the
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specification and to make it easier to implement ST-II in a manner which
is likely to be interoperable with other ST-II implementations. The
second decision was that there was no clear direction on future
standards track status for ST-II. A mailing list will be started in the
next week to discuss a proposed charter.
IPng Decision Process BOF (IPDECIDE)
About 200 people attended, plus about 100 MBONE auditors. Discussion
focussed on the decision process for IPng rather than on technical
criteria or the proposals. A clear consensus did not emerge, but
constant themes in the discussion included these:
1. Vendors and operators look to the IETF to reach a clear decision.
2. It would be bad to offer the market an ambiguous decision.
3. The market will resist any IPng that does not just look like a new
release of IP.
4. It is unclear how to prove that any proposal truly scales to a
billion nodes.
5. Timescales for IPv4 address depletion and for IPng deployment are
not well understood.
6. The IESG needs to figure out how to pursue the decision process and
avoid wasted effort on competing proposals.
Network Address Translators BOF (NAT)
Kjeld Borch Egevang's NAT implementation is described in the NAT
Internet-Draft. The scheme in that draft is not dynamic in that the
addresses used for translation are statically assigned to single hosts
for long periods of time. It is possible, however, to re-assign them to
other hosts. Another aspect of the scheme described is that the
addresses on the backbone side of the translator must be globally
unique. It was pointed out that other NAT schemes do not have these
characteristics (for instance, one proposed by Van Jacobson).
It was generally felt that it would be useful to the IP community to
have more knowledge of the pitfalls of NAT. This is particularly true
because anybody can install a NAT box independent of anybody else, and
in the absence of any NAT standard.
IP Over Asynchronous Transfer Mode Working Group (ATM)
The first session began with an announcement by Bob Hinden that Mark
Laubach will be the new ATM chair. An agenda was presented and agreed
upon for the three days. Steve Willis presented and led a review of
recent ATM Forum activities. Their User Network Interface (UNI)
Specification Version 3.0 document should be ratified in August. Juha
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Heinanen presented an overview of the European ATM pilot project. Joel
Halpern presented the topic of ``routing IP over the switched virtual
cloud.'' He volunteered to write a proposal. Consensus is that ATM
will host the proposal but actual work will be moved to another working
group that will deal with routing over large public networks. A general
discussion was held to collect comments on Ran Atkinson's MTU draft
document. Ran was not present at this meeting. In the last half hour
was spent on Mark Laubach's Classical IP and ARP Over ATM draft and
discussion and consensus building continued over the next two meetings.
The second session opened with a discussion of the time-table of working
group activities over the next half year. In order to fast-track this
document, technical review and final consensus on the draft will be
collected via email.
Unfortunately, discussion of the classical draft and related issues took
up most of the time of the working group. On the last day, Juha was
given twenty minutes to lead the discussion of his NBMA draft. Clearly
this was not enough time as much discussion was generated. Juha is
getting together with Joel Halpern to work on the issues raised in the
discussion.
IP Over Large Public Data Networks Working Group (IPLPDN)
IPLPDN met individually and with the PPPEXT Working Group and reached
the following decisions:
o A request will be made to advance RFC 1356, ``Multiprotocol over
X.25'' from Proposed to Draft Standard.
o The default encapsulation for circuit switched services will be
PPP.
o Concensus was reached for the PPP over X.25, ISDN, and Frame Relay
documents. They will be updated in the coming weeks.
o Progress was made on the definition of multilink transfer.
The IPLPDN group met for the last time, but the mailing list will remain
for unfinished business. Remaining topics will go to ATM, PPPEXT, and
newly created working groups.
P. Internet Protocol Working Group (PIP)
A specification overview was presented at the meeting. The
specification of forwarding has remained unchanged for the past three
months. The DNS architecture to support PIP has been revised. The PIP
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identifier structure has been revised. IDRP routing support for PIP has
revisions in progress. The host operations specifications has been
revised. The PIP Control Message Protocol is new, and is currently
incomplete. The PIP transition specification is new. Missing from the
specification is a MIB definition. Routing still requires further
definition.
Point-to-Point Protocol Extensions Working Group (PPPEXT)
o RFC 1171 should be Historical. When updated, the current PPP LCP
draft should go to Draft Standard.
o The HDLC Framing draft is a direct extraction from the older PPP
LCP document, and is ready for elevation to Draft Standard.
o The PPP LCP Extensions draft is recommended for consideration as a
Proposed Standard.
o The PPP requirements document will be reorganized and posted as an
Informational RFC.
o A separate breakout meeting was held for PPP Compression, and the
slides from the two presentations by Dave Rand and Dave Langley are
included with the minutes. They contain a lot of information.
Five candidate protocols are under active consideration.
Point-to-Point Protocol Extensions Working Group (PPPEXT) and
IP Over Large Public Data Networks Working Group (IPLPDN)
o The question was seriously discussed whether a default way to send
IP over circuit switched services such as ISDN B channel is needed.
It was observed that the question is malformed; a default way to
send IP over a V.35 or V.11 interface, for example, is not needed.
A way to speak to a peer system at the data link layer, which might
be a Frame Relay or X.25 switch, or a peer host or router is
needed.
o Various discussion were held about configuring multi-link PPP
groups. Discussions were also held about adding, removing, and
controlling seperate lines in a multilink group.
o An applicability statement for PPP over Frame Relay is needed.
o An applicability statement for PPP over X.25 in view of RFCs 877
and 1356 is needed.
o Bill Simpson presented his paper on PPP over ISDN. PPP must have
the same default MRU (and any other defaults) on ISDN as in other
environments. Keith Sklower will publish his IPLPDN document,
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``Determination of Encapsulation of Multi-Protocol Datagrams in
Circuit Switched Environment,'' and Bill indicated that he would
like to copy some of the technical material from them into this
document. It was decided that he would reference Keiths document.
o Keith and Bill will merge their documents. The resulting document
should be separate from the PPP over foo documents, as it is
desired to be placed on the standards track, and the PPP over foo
documents may not be placed on that track.
Simple Internet Protocol Working Group (SIP)
The group reviewed recent work on system discovery, auto configuration,
SIP RIP and SIP DNS. Translation issues raised by Ross Callon were also
reviewed. Gary Malkin presented comments received from Garcia Luna
Aceves (JJ) on SIP RIP. Bill Simpson led the discussion on the system
discovery draft. Bob Gilligan presented a set of ``preliminary ideas''
that he proposed to the mailing list on auto configuration.
TCP/UDP Over CLNP-Addressed Networks Working Group (TUBA)
Marcel Wiget (Switch) reported on the RARE CLNS Pilot. Applications
tested included: X.400, X.500, FTAM, DECnet, VT, TUBA, OSI Ping,
traceroute, etc. Current activities include a task force for CLNS
routing coordination. A spirited discussion was held on the use of
IS-IS for routing the global CLNS network.
TP/IX Working Group Working Group (TPIX)
The TP/IX Working Group conducted its first meeting. There were two
sessions. Two new Internet-Drafts were presented in the first session,
``Initial AD Assignment Plan'' and ``Transit Policy Routing in TP/IX.''
In the second session, the TCP large window performance options and a
new experimental TCP record marking option, both documented in the new
TCP options draft, were discussed. All items on the agenda were covered
by the working group. The status of TP/IX and RAP protocols was
reported, and a lot of questions were answered concerning the transition
from IPv4 to TP/IX.
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