RFC 1015 (rfc1015) - Page 3 of 24


Implementation plan for interagency research Internet



Alternative Format: Original Text Document



RFC 1015                      IRI Plan                         July 1987


    are connected to a NASA supported network. Now a scientist at the
    same institution but supported by NSF needs access to an NSF
    supercomputer. It is much more effective to provide that
    connectivity through an interconnection of NASA and NSF networks
    than to establish another connection (to NSFnet) to the same
    university.

    The need to establish communication infrastructure to permit
    scientists to access resources without regard to which network they
    are connected but without violating access controls on either the
    networks or the resources. A scientist may be supported by multiple
    agencies, and therefore have access to resources provided by several
    agencies. It is not cost-effective to have to provide a separate
    network connection to the scientist for each of those agency
    resources.

    The need for a communications infrastructure to encourage
    collaborative scientific research. One of the primary functions of a
    computer network supporting science is the encouraging of
    collaboration between researchers.  Scientific disciplines typically
    cut across many different agencies. Thus, support of this
    collaboration should be without regard to agency affiliation or
    support of the scientists involved.

    The need for a cooperative research and development program to
    evolve and enhance the IRI and its components where appropriate.
    Scientific research is highly demanding of both the computing and
    networking environment. To assure that these needs continue to be
    met, it is necessary to continually advance the state of the art in
    networking, and apply the results to the research networks.  No
    individual agency can  afford to support the required research
    alone, nor is it desirable to have inordinate duplication of
    research.

Summary of previous report

    These reasons led to the formation of the FCCSET Commitee on Very
    High Performance Computing and its Network Working Group. This group
    began in early 1985 to discuss the possibility of interconnecting
    into a common networking facility the various agency networks
    supporting scientific research. These discussions led to the report
    issued earlier this year [1] recommending such an approach.

    The report used the "Network of Networks" or Internet model of
    interconnection.  Using a standard set of protocols, the various
    networks can be connected to provide a common set of user services
    across heterogenous networks and heterogenous host computers [2,
    3,4]. This approach is discussed further in the Background section



Leiner