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RE: How the IPnG effort was started

2004-11-09 06:14:11
Noel,
 
In the interest of completeness I would note that at the time the size of the 
global Internet routing table was also a very high concern and core to at least 
one session at each IETF meeting at the time.  Pre-cidr we were at risk of 
running out of class B addresses and thus causing a blowout in allocation of 
class Cs.   In short, the IP layer was in need of some "firming up", on 
multiple fronts. (too bad we didn't go farther ...)
 
As a co-chair of the TUBA (tcp/udp with Big Addresses) wg that recommended the 
use of CLNP I would note most people in the TUBA wg supported the use of CLNP 
because:
 
0) CLNP satisfied the requirement for a globally unique huge address space and 
CLNP and IPv4 were fairly comparable from an architecture perspective (thanks 
to several people ( Dave Oran, Ross Callon, Lyman Chapin, Dino Farinacci, Tony 
Hain, Yakov Rekhter, Radia Perlman, Tony Lauck, Brian Carpenter, Richard 
Colella, etc.) who spanned the IETF and ISO/OSI worlds  )
1) there were ample existence proofs of CLNP in router and host software that 
were shipping at the time
1a) several independent implementors successfully moved TCP/UDP on top of CLNP 
along with  several apps (email, telnet, ftp)  on several platforms in a super 
short period of time (BSD, DOS, etc.)
2) there were existing, working, and deployed routing protocols on a global 
basis (ES-IS, IS-IS) - e.g. no tunneling to prove "it works"
3) CLNP supported autoconfiguration of host addresses (ES-IS) (best feature of 
IPv6!)
4) it was felt that at the time it would be the "quickest" transition, since 
time was of the essence!
5) CLNP also allowed for short addresses via variable length addressing (e.g. 
use of IPng in private supercomputer clusters, etc.)
6) the address space had a natural delegation architecture which could suit the 
needs of a variety of parties at the time.
 
Many of these same reasons were held to be true by people who worked prior to 
TUBA in the pre-IPNG discussions/debates.
 
Christian is correct in that several people felt the answer of CLNP was "THE 
answer" and thus were over-zealous in pushing in that direction and aligned the 
discussions of IPng with other discussions re: CLNP.   (keen time observers 
will note that the TUBA effort and the Kobe "stuff" were unaligned.   Several 
people who supported CLNP did not believe they needed help from the IAB, 
especially in light of the IETF's political climate at the time regarding the 
IAB, the NSF, the funding of the IETF and NIC, etc., etc.)
 
In most ways, IPv6 has replicated all of the properties enumerated above and 
thus, it is now clear that we do not need to transition to CLNP.  
 
regards, peterf
 
 
 
 
 
 

________________________________

From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org on behalf of Noel Chiappa
Sent: Sun 11/7/2004 7:46 PM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Cc: jnc(_at_)mercury(_dot_)lcs(_dot_)mit(_dot_)edu
Subject: Re: How the IPnG effort was started



    > From: "Christian Huitema" <huitema(_at_)windows(_dot_)microsoft(_dot_)com>

    > The issue of IP address exhaustion had already been debated on several
    > occasions.
    > ...
    > The proposal in 1992 to base an IPng on CLNP was pretty much a
    > continuation of these discussions, and it did indeed come in quite
    > early in the process.

Yes, and the chief "selling point" people were using to push CLNP was....
larger addresses. And when the IETF wasn't thrilled about adopting OSI
protocols, they set up the IPng process, which picked.... IPv6.

So I think my orginal messages (that IPv6 exists because of a previous round
of concern about IPv4 address exhaustion, which was used by the proponents of
yet another protocol that was going to "replace" IPv4 to push for their
protocol's adoption) was right on target.

        Noel

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