RFC 1454 (rfc1454) - Page 3 of 15

Comparison of Proposals for Next Version of IP

RFC 1454        Comparison of Next Version IP Proposals         May 1993


2. WHAT THE PROPOSALS HAVE IN COMMON

2.1 Larger Addresses

   All the proposals (of course) make provision for larger address
   fields which not only increase the number of addressable systems, but
   also permit the hierarchical allocation of addresses to facilitate
   route aggregation.

2.2 Philosophy

   The proposals also originate from a "routing implementation" view of
   the world - that is to say they focus on the internals of routing
   within the network and do not primarily look at the network service
   seen by the end-user, or by applications. This is perhaps inevitable,
   especially given the tight time constraints for producing
   interoperable implementations. However, the (few) representatives of
   real users at the 25th IETF, the people whose support is ultimately
   necessary to deploy new host implementations, were distinctly
   unhappy.

   There is an inbuilt assumption in the proposals that IPng is
   intended to be a universal protocol: that is, that the same network-
   layer protocol will be used between hosts on the same LAN, between
   hosts and routers, between routers in the same domain, and between
   routers in different domains. There are some advantages in defining
   separate "access" and "long-haul" protocols, and this is not
   precluded by the requirements. However, despite the few opportunities
   for major change of this sort within the Internet, the need for speed
   of development and low risk have led to the proposals being
   incremental, rather than radical, changes to well-proven existing
   technology.

   There is a further unstated assumption that the architecture is
   targeted at the singly-connected host. It is currently difficult to
   design IPv4 networks which permit hosts with more than one interface
   to benefit from increased bandwidth and reliability compared with
   singly-connected hosts (a consequence of the address belonging to the
   interface and not the host). It would be preferable if topological
   constraints such as these were documented. It has been asserted that
   this is not necessarily a constraint of either the PIP or TUBA
   proposals, but I believe it is an issue that has not emerged so far
   amongst the comparative criteria.








Dixon