RFC 1169 (rfc1169) - Page 3 of 15

Explaining the role of GOSIP

RFC 1169              Explaining the Role of GOSIP           August 1990


   discuss the role of Federal Agencies in this process.

4.  Acknowledgements

   Special thanks are due to Rebecca Nitzan of Sterling and Phill Gross
   of CNRI for developing several draft versions of this RFC.

5.  GOSIP Background

   The Government OSI Profile (GOSIP), published as Federal Information
   Processing Standard (FIPS) 146, issued by the National Institute of
   Standards and Technology (NIST), specifies the details of an OSI
   configuration for use in the Government so that interoperable OSI
   products can be procured from commercial vendors.  GOSIP is needed
   because OSI standards allow many potential options and choices, some
   of which are incompatible.  GOSIP is based on refinements of OSI
   standards.  The refinements are agreed to by commercial implementors
   and potential users through a series of OSI Implementors Workshops
   (OIW) hosted by NIST four times every year since 1983.  As OSI
   becomes more widely deployed, GOSIP compliance will become
   increasingly important.

   GOSIP was written by an inter-agency group and continues to evolve
   under the guidance of the GOSIP Advanced Requirements Group.  The
   IETF is represented on the GOSIP Advanced Requirements Group, as are
   Federal Government Agencies, including the FNC agencies.

   The GOSIP FIPS consists of:

      1. An announcement adopting GOSIP as a Federal standard.  The
         announcement section of the FIPS covers topics such as the
         objectives of GOSIP, its applicability, implementation
         requirements, and waiver procedures.

      2. The technical specification of GOSIP products to be procured.
         The technical specification section of GOSIP describes the
         details of a subset of OSI protocols.  Products implementing
         GOSIP are in development by or available from many computer
         vendors.

      3. Appendices describing the plans for including additional
         functionality into future versions of the GOSIP technical
         specification.

   The first version of GOSIP was published in August 1988 following a
   long comment period beginning as early as January 1987.  GOSIP was
   adopted as FIPS 146 in February 1989 and will become a Federal
   procurement requirement in August 1990 [1].  A second version of



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