RFC 1547 (rfc1547) - Page 3 of 21

Requirements for an Internet Standard Point-to-Point Protocol

RFC 1547          Point-to-Point Protocol Requirements     December 1993


   4.3.5 Wellfleet point-to-point protocol ...........................19
   4.3.6 XNS Synchronous Point-to-Point Protocol .....................19
   REFERENCES ........................................................20
   SECURITY CONSIDERATION.............................................21
   CHAIR'S ADDRESS ...................................................21
   AUTHOR'S ADDRESS ..................................................21
   EDITOR'S ADDRESS ..................................................21

1. Introduction

   The Internet has seen explosive growth in the number of hosts
   supporting IP [1].  The vast majority of these hosts are connected to
   Local Area Networks (LANs) of various types, Ethernet being the most
   common.  Most of the other hosts are connected through Wide Area
   Networks (WANs), such as X.25 style Public Data Networks (PDNs).

   In the past, relatively few of these hosts were connected with simple
   point-to-point links.  Yet, point-to-point serial links are among the
   oldest methods of data communications, and almost every host supports
   point-to-point connections.  For example, asynchronous RS-232
   interfaces are essentially ubiquitous.

   One reason for the small number of point-to-point IP links was the
   lack of a single established encapsulation protocol.  There were
   plenty of non-standard (and at least one de facto standard)
   encapsulation protocols available, but there was not one which was
   agreed upon as an Internet Standard.

   A number of protocols have been proposed to the Internet community,
   but no consensus was reached as to which protocol should be adopted
   as a standard.  The reason may be that these proposals often
   addressed specific problems rather than providing general purpose
   service.

   For example, one of the most successful protocols to-date was Rick
   Adam's SLIP protocol for BSD UNIX [9].  SLIP provides only the most
   rudimentary support for sending IP datagrams over asynchronous serial
   lines, and ignores issues such as the use of protocols other than IP
   and the use of synchronous links.

   This document proposes a set of requirements for an Internet Standard
   point-to-point protocol (ISPPP).  Its purpose is not to propose any
   one design for the standard; any solutions outlined in the text are
   intended only as examples, and do not preclude other implementations.

   The document is divided into four major sections.  The first section
   defines a number of technical terms used in this document.  The
   second section lists the proposed requirements and details some



Perkins