RFC 1547 (rfc1547) - Page 3 of 21
Requirements for an Internet Standard Point-to-Point Protocol
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1547 Point-to-Point Protocol Requirements December 1993
4.3.5 Wellfleet point-to-point protocol ...........................19
4.3.6 XNS Synchronous Point-to-Point Protocol .....................19
REFERENCES ........................................................20
SECURITY CONSIDERATION.............................................21
CHAIR'S ADDRESS ...................................................21
AUTHOR'S ADDRESS ..................................................21
EDITOR'S ADDRESS ..................................................21
1. Introduction
The Internet has seen explosive growth in the number of hosts
supporting IP [1]. The vast majority of these hosts are connected to
Local Area Networks (LANs) of various types, Ethernet being the most
common. Most of the other hosts are connected through Wide Area
Networks (WANs), such as X.25 style Public Data Networks (PDNs).
In the past, relatively few of these hosts were connected with simple
point-to-point links. Yet, point-to-point serial links are among the
oldest methods of data communications, and almost every host supports
point-to-point connections. For example, asynchronous RS-232
interfaces are essentially ubiquitous.
One reason for the small number of point-to-point IP links was the
lack of a single established encapsulation protocol. There were
plenty of non-standard (and at least one de facto standard)
encapsulation protocols available, but there was not one which was
agreed upon as an Internet Standard.
A number of protocols have been proposed to the Internet community,
but no consensus was reached as to which protocol should be adopted
as a standard. The reason may be that these proposals often
addressed specific problems rather than providing general purpose
service.
For example, one of the most successful protocols to-date was Rick
Adam's SLIP protocol for BSD UNIX [9]. SLIP provides only the most
rudimentary support for sending IP datagrams over asynchronous serial
lines, and ignores issues such as the use of protocols other than IP
and the use of synchronous links.
This document proposes a set of requirements for an Internet Standard
point-to-point protocol (ISPPP). Its purpose is not to propose any
one design for the standard; any solutions outlined in the text are
intended only as examples, and do not preclude other implementations.
The document is divided into four major sections. The first section
defines a number of technical terms used in this document. The
second section lists the proposed requirements and details some
Perkins