📄 rfc1671.txt
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RFC 1671 IPng White Paper on Transition, etc. August 1994
but just that they behave as if they did. It is compatible with
encapsulation (i.e., one of the two stacks encapsulates packets for
the other).
Obviously, management of dual stack hosts will be simplified by the
address mapping just mentioned. Only the site prefix has to be
configured (manually or dynamically) in addition to the IPv4 address.
In a dual stack host the IPng API and the IPv4 API will be logically
distinguishable even if they are implemented as a single entity.
Applications will know from the API whether they are using IPng or
IPv4.
F) DNS.
The dual stack requirement implies that DNS has to reply with both an
IPv4 and IPng address for IPng hosts, or with a single reply that
encodes both.
If a host is attributed an IPng address in DNS, but is not actually
running IPng yet, it will appear as a black hole in IPng space - see
the next point.
G) Smart dual-stack code.
The dual-stack code may get two addresses back from DNS; which does
it use? During the many years of transition the Internet will
contain black holes. For example, somewhere on the way from IPng host
A to IPng host B there will sometimes (unpredictably) be IPv4-only
routers which discard IPng packets. Also, the state of the DNS does
not necessarily correspond to reality. A host for which DNS claims to
know an IPng address may in fact not be running IPng at a particular
moment; thus an IPng packet to that host will be discarded on
delivery. Knowing that a host has both IPv4 and IPng addresses gives
no information about black holes. A solution to this must be proposed
and it must not depend on manually maintained information. (If this
is not solved, the dual stack approach is no better than the packet
translation approach.)
H) Smart management tools.
A whole set of management tools is going to be needed during the
transition. Why is my IPng route different from my IPv4 route? If
there is translation, where does it happen? Where are the black
holes? (Cosmologists would like the same tool :-) Is that host REALLY
IPng-capable today?...
Carpenter [Page 5]
RFC 1671 IPng White Paper on Transition, etc. August 1994
Multicasts high and low
It is taken for granted that multicast applications must be supported
by IPng. One obvious architectural rule is that no multicast packet
should ever travel twice over the same wire, whether it is a LAN or
WAN wire. Failure to observe this would mean that the maximum number
of simultaneous multicast transactions would be halved.
A negative feature of IPv4 on LANs is the cavalier use of physical
broadcast packets by protcols such as ARP (and various non-IETF
copycats). On large LANs this leads to a number of undesirable
consequences (often caused by poor products or poor users, not by the
protcol design itself). The obvious architectural rule is that
physical broadcast should be replaced by unicast (or at worst,
multicast) whenever possible.
ATM
The networking industry is investing heavily in ATM. No IPng proposal
will be plausible (in the sense of gaining management approval)
unless it is "ATM compatible", i.e., there is a clear model of how it
will run over an ATM network. Although a fully detailed document such
as RFC 1577 is not needed immediately, it must be shown that the
basic model works.
Similar remarks could be made about X.25, Frame Relay, SMDS etc. but
ATM is the case with the highest management hype ratio today.
Policy routing and accounting
Unfortunately, this cannot be ignored, however much one would like
to. Funding agencies want traffic to flow over the lines funded to
carry it, and they want to know afterwards how much traffic there
was. Accounting information can also be used for network planning
and for back-charging.
It is therefore necessary that IPng and its routing procedures allow
traffic to be routed in a way that depends on its source and
destination in detail. (As an example, traffic from the Physics
department of MIT might be required to travel a different route to
CERN than traffic from any other department.)
A simple approach to this requirement is to insist that IPng must
support provider-based addressing and routing.
Accounting of traffic is required at the same level of detail (or
more, for example how much of the traffic is ftp and how much is
www?).
Carpenter [Page 6]
RFC 1671 IPng White Paper on Transition, etc. August 1994
Both of these requirements will cost time or money and may impact
more than just the IP layer, but IPng should not duck them.
Security Considerations
Corporate network operators, and campus network operators who have
been hacked a few times, take this more seriously than many protocol
experts. Indeed many corporate network operators would see improved
security as a more compelling argument for transition to IPng than
anything else.
Since IPng will presumably be a datagram protocol, limiting what can
be done in terms of end-to-end security, IPng must allow more
effective firewalls in routers than IPv4. In particular efficient
traffic barring based on source and destination addresses and types
of transaction is needed.
It seems likely that the same features needed to allow policy routing
and detailed accounting would be needed for improved firewall
security. It is outside the scope of this document to discuss these
features in detail, but it seems unlikely that they are limited to
implementation details in the border routers. Packets will have to
carry some authenticated trace of the (source, destination,
transaction) triplet in order to check for unwanted traffic, to allow
policy-based source routing, and/or to allow detailed accounting.
Presumably any IPng will carry source and destination identifiers in
some format in every packet, but identifying the type of transaction,
or even the individual transaction, is an extra requirement.
Disclaimer and Acknowledgements
This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent that of my
employer.
CERN has been through three network transitions in recent years (IPv4
renumbering managed by John Gamble, AppleTalk Phase I to Phase II
transition managed by Mike Gerard, and DECnet Phase IV to DECnet/OSI
routing transition managed by Denise Heagerty). I could not have
written this document without having learnt from them. I have also
benefitted greatly from discussions with or the writings of many
people, especially various members of the IPng Directorate. Several
Directorate members gave comments that helped clarify this paper, as
did Bruce L Hutfless of Boeing. However the opinions are mine and
are not shared by all Directorate members.
Carpenter [Page 7]
RFC 1671 IPng White Paper on Transition, etc. August 1994
Author's Address
Brian E. Carpenter
Group Leader, Communications Systems
Computing and Networks Division
CERN
European Laboratory for Particle Physics
1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland
Phone: +41 22 767-4967
Fax: +41 22 767-7155
Telex: 419000 cer ch
EMail: brian@dxcoms.cern.ch
Carpenter [Page 8]
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