RFC 1726 (rfc1726) - Page 2 of 31

Technical Criteria for Choosing IP The Next Generation (IPng)

RFC 1726                IPng Technical Criteria            December 1994


    5.13    Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
    5.13.1  Algorithms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
    5.13.2  Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
    5.13.3  Data Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
    5.13.4  Packets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
    5.14    Network Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
    5.15    Support for Mobility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
    5.16    Control Protocol. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
    5.17    Private Networks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
  6.        Things We Chose Not to Require. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
    6.1     Fragmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
    6.2     IP Header Checksum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
    6.3     Firewalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
    6.4     Network Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
    6.5     Accounting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
    6.6     Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
    6.6.1   Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
    6.6.2   Policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
    6.6.3   QOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
    6.6.4   Feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
    6.6.5   Stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
    6.6.6   Multicast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
  7.       References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
  8.        Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
  9.        Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
 10.        Authors' Addresses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

1. Introduction

   This version of this memo was commissioned by the IPng area of the
   IETF in order to define a set of criteria to be used in evaluating
   the protocols being proposed for adoption as the next generation of
   IP.

   The criteria presented here were culled from several sources,
   including "IP Version 7" [1], "IESG Deliberations on Routing and
   Addressing" [2], "Towards the Future Internet Architecture" [3], the
   IPng Requirements BOF held at the Washington D.C. IETF Meeting in
   December of 1992, the IPng Working Group meeting at the Seattle IETF
   meeting in March 1994, the discussions held on the Big-Internet
   mailing list (, send requests to join to
   ), discussions with the IPng Area
   Directors and Directorate, and the mailing lists devoted to the
   individual IPng efforts.

   This document presumes that a new IP-layer protocol is actually
   desired. There is some discussion in the community as to whether we
   can extend the life of IPv4 for a significant amount of time by



Partridge and Kastenholz