RFC 1671 (rfc1671) - Page 1 of 8
IPng White Paper on Transition and Other Considerations
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group B. Carpenter
Request for Comments: 1671 CERN
Category: Informational August 1994
IPng White Paper on Transition and Other Considerations
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo
does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of
this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This document was submitted to the IETF IPng area in response to RFC
1550. Publication of this document does not imply acceptance by the
IPng area of any ideas expressed within. Comments should be
submitted to the mailing list.
Summary
This white paper outlines some general requirements for IPng in
selected areas. It identifies the following requirements for stepwise
transition:
A) Interworking at every stage and every layer.
B) Header translation considered harmful
C) Coexistence.
D) IPv4 to IPng address mapping.
E) Dual stack hosts.
F) DNS.
G) Smart dual-stack code.
H) Smart management tools.
Some remarks about phsysical and logical multicast follow, and it is
suggested that a model of how IPng will run over ATM is needed.
Finally, the paper suggests that the requirements for policy routing,
accounting, and security firewalls will in turn require all IPng
packets to carry a trace of the type of transaction involved as well
as of their source and destination.
Transition and deployment
It is clear that the transition will take years and that every site
will have to decide its own staged transition plan. Only the very
smallest sites could envisage a single step ("flag day") transition,
Carpenter