RFC 1678 (rfc1678) - Page 2 of 8


IPng Requirements of Large Corporate Networks



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RFC 1678     IPng Requirements of Large Corporate Networks   August 1994


   IPng, IPng must offer compelling advantages and an easy migration
   path.

   Corporate networks must meet promised levels of service while
   controlling costs through efficient use of resources.  The IETF
   should consider both technical solutions (such as service classes and
   priorities) and administrative ones (such as accounting) to promote
   economy.

   Many businesses will not connect to a network until they are
   confident that it will not significantly threaten the
   confidentiality, integrity, or availability of their data.

   Corporations tend to use multiple protocols.  Numerous forces stymie
   the desire to settle on just one protocol for a large corporation:
   diverse installed bases, skills, technical factors, and the general
   trend toward corporate decentralization.  The IETF needs a strategy
   for heterogeneity flexible enough to accommodate the principal
   multiprotocol techniques, including multiprotocol transport,
   tunneling, and link sharing.

   Some of these requirements might be satisfied by more extensive
   deployment of existing Internet architectures (e.g., Generic Security
   Service and IPv4 type of service).  The current Internet protocols
   could be enhanced to satisfy most of the remaining requirements of
   commercial users while retaining IPv4.  Nevertheless, some
   corporations will be scared away from TCP/IP by the publicity about
   the address space until the IETF sets a direction for its expansion.

Migration and Coexistence

   As the use of IPv4 continues to grow, the day may come when no more
   IPv4 network addresses will be left, and no additional networks will
   be able to connect to the Internet.  Classless Inter-Domain Routing
   (CIDR, RFC 1519) and careful gleaning of the address space will
   postpone that cutoff for several years.  The hundreds of millions of
   people on networks that do get IPv4 addresses won't be affected
   directly by the exhaustion of the address space, but they will miss
   the opportunity to communicate with those less lucky.

   Because the Internet is too large for all its users to cutover to
   IPng quickly, IPng must coexist well with IPv4.  Furthermore, IPv4
   users won't upgrade to IPng without a compelling reason.  Access to
   new services will not be a strong motivation, since new services will
   want to support both the IPng users and the IPv4 users.  Only
   services that cannot exist on IPv4 will be willing to use IPng
   exclusively.  Moreover, if IPng requires more resources (e.g.,
   storage, memory, or administrative complexity) than IPv4, users will



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