RFC 1385 (rfc1385) - Page 2 of 17
EIP: The Extended Internet Protocol
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1385 EIP November 1992
development and deployment of such a new "Internet" would take a very
large amount of time and effort. In particular, in order to maintain
interoperability between the old and new systems during the
transition period, almost all upgraded systems have to run both the
new and old versions in parallel and also have to determine which
version to use depending on whether the other side is upgraded or
not.
Let us now have a look at the detailed changes that will be required
to replace the current IP with a completely new "IP" and to maintain
the interoperability between the new and the old systems.
1) Border Routers: Border routers have to be upgraded and to provide
address translation service for IP packets across the boundaries.
Note that the translation has to be done on the outgoing IP
packets as well as the in-coming packets to IP hosts.
2) Subnet Routers: Subnet Routers have to be upgraded and have to
deal with both the new and the old packet formats.
3) Hosts: Hosts have to be upgraded and run both the new and the
old protocols in parallel. Upgraded hosts also have to determine
whether the other side is upgraded or not in order to choose the
correct protocol to use.
4) DNS: The DNS has to be modified to provide mapping for domain
names and new addresses.
5) ARP/RARP: ARP/RARP have to be modified, and upgraded hosts and
routers have to deal with both the old and new ARP/RARP packets.
6) ICMP: ICMP has to be modified, and the upgraded routers have to
be able to generate both both old and new ICMP packets. However,
it may be impossible for a backbone router to determine
whether the packet comes from an upgraded host or an IP host but
translated by the border router.
7) TCP/UDP Checksum: The pseudo headers may have to be modified to
use the new addresses.
8) FTP: The DATA PORT (PORT) command has to be changed to pass new
addresses.
In this paper, we argue that an evolutionary approach can extend the
addressing space yet maintain backward compatibility. The Extended
Internet Protocol (EIP) we present here can be used as a framework by
which a new routing and addressing scheme may solve the problem of
address exhaustion yet maintain maximum backward compatibility to
Wang