RFC 1670 (rfc1670) - Page 2 of 3

Input to IPng Engineering Considerations

RFC 1670        Input to IPng Engineering Considerations     August 1994


   I would like to see an early decision on address structure and enough
   information for service managers to start planning their transition.
   Some hosts will never be upgraded and will need to be phased out or
   configured with reduced connectivity. A lead time of 10 years (or
   more) will help to take good long term technical decisions and ease
   financial and organisational constraints.

Transition and deployment

   Transition requires intimate knowledge of the environment (financial,
   political as well as technical). The task needs to be broken down so
   that service managers close to their clients can take decisions and
   make them happen.

   Let the service managers adapt the solutions for their environment by
   providing them with a transition toolbox and scenarios of their uses
   based on real examples. Clearly state the merits and limitations of
   different transition strategies.

   Provide for transition autonomy. Let systems and sites transition at
   different times, as convenient for them.

   Identify what software needs to be changed and keep an up-to-date
   list.

   Identify what is essential to have in place so that service managers
   can transition at their own pace.

   Allow for a feedback loop to improve software based on experience.

Configuration, Administration, Operation

   We run IP on a wide range of equipment and operating systems.  We
   need an easy way to (re-)configure all our IP capable systems.  The
   systems need to be sent their IP parameters (e.g., their address,
   address of their default router, address of their local name servers)
   and we need to obtain data from the system (e.g., contact information
   for owner, location and name of system). We also need an easy way to
   update DNS.

   In our environment systems are regularly moved between buildings and
   we therefore find the tight coupling of IP address to physical subnet
   over restrictive. Automatic configuration could help overcome this.

   We would like to efficiently load balance users of various IP based
   services (e.g., telnet, ftp, locally written applications) across a
   number of systems.




Heagerty