RFC 1374 (rfc1374) - Page 2 of 43

IP and ARP on HIPPI

RFC 1374                  IP and ARP on HIPPI               October 1992


         ARP Example                                                23
         Discovery of One's Own Switch Address                      25

      Path MTU Discovery                                            27
      Channel Data Rate Discovery                                   27
      Performance                                                   29
      Sharing the Switch                                            31
      Appendix A -- HIPPI Basics                                    31
      Appendix B -- How to Build a Practical HIPPI LAN              37
      References                                                    41
      Security Considerations                                       42
      Authors' Addresses                                            42

Introduction

   The ANSI High-Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI) is a simplex
   data channel.  Configured in pairs, HIPPI can send and receive data
   simultaneously at nearly 800 megabits per second.  (HIPPI has an
   equally applicable 1600 megabit/second option.) Between 1987 and
   1991, the ANSI X3T9.3 HIPPI working group drafted four documents that
   bear on the use of HIPPI as a network interface.  They cover the
   physical and electrical specification (HIPPI-PH [1]), the framing of
   a stream of octets (HIPPI-FP [2]), encapsulation of IEEE 802.2 LLC
   (HIPPI-LE [3]), and the behavior of a standard physical layer switch
   (HIPPI-SC [4]).  HIPPI-LE also implies the encapsulation of Internet
   Protocol[5].  The reader should be familiar with the ANSI HIPPI
   documents, copies of which are archived at the site
   "nsco.network.com" in the directory "hippi," and may be obtained via
   anonymous FTP until they become published standards.

   HIPPI switches can be used to connect a variety of computers and
   peripheral equipment for many purposes, but the working group stopped
   short of describing their use as Local Area Networks.  This memo
   takes up where the working group left off, using the guiding
   principle that except for length and hardware header, Internet
   datagrams sent on HIPPI should be identical to the same datagrams
   sent on a conventional network, and that any datagram sent on a
   conventional 802 network[6] should be valid on HIPPI.

Scope

   This memo describes the HIPPI interface between a host and a
   crosspoint switch that complies with the HIPPI-SC draft standard.
   Issues that have no impact on host implementations are outside the
   scope of this memo.  Host implementations that comply with this memo
   are believed to be interoperable on a network composed of a single
   HIPPI-SC switch.  They are also interoperable on a simple point-to-
   point, two-way HIPPI connection with no switch between them.  They



Renwick & Nicholson