RFC 1385 (rfc1385) - Page 1 of 17

EIP: The Extended Internet Protocol

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Network Working Group                                            Z. Wang
Request for Comments: 1385                     University College London
                                                           November 1992


                  EIP: The Extended Internet Protocol
           A Framework for Maintaining Backward Compatibility

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
   not specify an Internet standard. Distribution of this memo is
   unlimited.

Summary

   The Extended Internet Protocol (EIP) provides a framework for solving
   the problem of address space exhaustion with a new addressing and
   routing scheme, yet maintaining maximum backward compatibility with
   current IP. EIP can substantially reduce the amount of modifications
   needed to the current Internet systems and greatly ease the
   difficulties of transition. This is an "idea" paper and discussion is
   strongly encouraged on .

Introduction

   The Internet faces two serious scaling problems: address exhaustion
   and routing explosion [1-2]. The Internet will run out of Class B
   numbers soon and the 32-bit IP address space will be exhausted
   altogether in a few years time.  The total number of IP networks will
   also grow to a point where routing algorithms will not be able to
   perform routing based a flat network number.

   A number of short-term solutions have been proposed recently which
   attempt to make more efficient use of the the remaining address space
   and to ease the immediate difficulties [3-5].  However, it is
   important that a long term solution be developed and deployed before
   the 32-bit address space runs out.

   An obvious approach to this problem is to replace the current IP with
   a new internet protocol that has no backward compatibility with the
   current IP. A number of proposals have been put forward: Pip[7],
   Nimrod [8], TUBA [6] and SIP [14].  However, as IP is really the
   cornerstone of the current Internet, replacing it with a new "IP"
   requires fundamental changes to many aspects of the Internet system
   (e.g., routing, routers, hosts, ARP, RARP, ICMP, TCP, UDP, DNS, FTP).

   Migrating to a new "IP" in effect creates a new "Internet".  The



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