IETF IPng Working Group
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| IETF IPng Working Group | |
|---|---|
| Name | IPng Working Group |
| Parent | Internet Engineering Task Force |
| Formed | 1990 |
| Purpose | Address Internet Protocol scalability and addressing limitations |
| Chairs | Dave Clark; Vint Cerf; Jon Postel |
IETF IPng Working Group
The IETF IPng Working Group was a chartered effort within the Internet Engineering Task Force to identify and specify the next-generation Internet Protocol to supersede IPv4, driven by exhaustion concerns and architectural limits identified by researchers and operational bodies. The group brought together participants from ARPA, DARPA, NSF, MCI Communications Corporation, AT&T, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems, and operators from Merit Network, Sprint, UUNET, merging academic, commercial, and governmental perspectives to produce evaluative criteria, candidate proposals, and transition guidance.
Background and Objectives
The working group's formation followed discussions at meetings of the Internet Architecture Board, IETF Area Directors, and the Internet Society as packet-scale growth and address depletion became evident to stakeholders including Jon Postel, Vint Cerf, Steve Crocker, Dave Clark, and representatives from RIPE NCC, APNIC, ARIN, and national research networks like SURFnet. Objectives included defining technical requirements for a successor to IPv4, producing evaluation criteria aligned with operational needs of backbone providers such as GTE, BT Group, and Deutsche Telekom, and recommending a protocol suitable for deployment by entities including CERFnet, NorduNet, CANARIE, and campus networks like MIT and Stanford University.
Technical Requirements and Evaluation Criteria
The working group produced criteria reflecting input from protocol designers at Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, Hewlett-Packard, and researchers at University of California, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, and University College London. Requirements emphasized scalable addressing to meet forecasts from analysts at Bellcore, routing aggregation advocated by Cisco Systems, security considerations highlighted by RSA Security and CERT Coordination Center, and compatibility with transport protocols designed at University of Delaware and University of Southern California/ISI. Evaluation criteria prioritized address space size, routing table growth impact observed by operators like ANS and PSINet, header processing overhead studied by researchers at MITRE Corporation and Los Alamos National Laboratory, and extensibility to support multicast, mobility, and quality-of-service features proposed by teams at Multicast Backbone and IETF Differentiated Services proponents.
Candidate Protocols and Selection Process
Numerous proposals were submitted from design teams at Xerox PARC, Bell Labs, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Microsoft Research, MIT, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, ISI, BARRNet, SRI International, KPN Research, NTT, Fujitsu Laboratories, Hitachi, Toshiba, ERI, AT&T Bell Laboratories, GTE Laboratories, Hewlett-Packard Labs, Huawei Technologies, NEC Corporation, Alcatel, Lucent Technologies, Ericsson Research, Nokia Research Center, Telefonica I+D, TIM, Telstra, Singapore Telecommunications, RIKEN, CSIRO ICT Centre, CEA, CERN, NIST, NTIA, ITU-T, IEEE 802, IAB, IANA, and independent authors. Major candidate protocols included proposals later known by their authors or origins such as the proposals from Steve Deering's groups, teams associated with Bob Hinden, and designs from Paul Mockapetris's collaborators; the selection process relied on working group discussions, triage at IETF plenaries, and consensus-building facilitated by chairs and area directors. Evaluation workshops and BOF sessions at venues like INTERNET2, RIPE Meetings, and APRICOT informed narrowing to a small set of finalists.
Standardization Work and RFCs Produced
The group's deliberations culminated in a sequence of informational and standards-track documents circulated as Internet-Drafts and published as RFCs by the RFC Editor office, involving contributors such as Jon Postel, Vint Cerf, Dave Clark, Steve Deering, Bob Hinden, Lixia Zhang, Scott Bradner, and Lorenzo Colitti. Key RFCs articulated requirements, evaluation methodology, and transition strategies, reflecting input from IETF Working Group Chairs, Area Directors, and external organizations like IANA and the Internet Research Task Force. The documents influenced subsequent standards produced by protocol development teams and working groups across the IETF and informed related efforts within ITU-T, IEEE, and regional registries such as RIPE NCC and APNIC.
Implementation, Deployment, and Transition Issues
Operational concerns raised by backbone operators including UUNET, Sprint, MCI Communications Corporation, AT&T, and Deutsche Telekom shaped transition mechanisms addressing coexistence, tunneling, and address allocation to registries like RIPE NCC, ARIN, APNIC, and LACNIC. Implementers at Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Sun Microsystems, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Apple Computer, Intel, NEC, Fujitsu Laboratories, Ericsson Research, Nokia Research Center, and open-source communities such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux Kernel Developers, and BSDI explored stacks, APIs, and dual-stack strategies. Tests and pilot deployments in research networks including Internet2, GEANT, Canarie, SURFnet, TEN-155, and campus testbeds at UC Berkeley, MIT, and Stanford University revealed challenges with routing scalability, transition middleboxes from vendors like Symantec and Check Point Software Technologies, address translation approaches debated by IETF NAT Working Group participants, and security interactions noted by CERT Coordination Center.
Legacy Impact and Historical Significance
The working group's rigorous evaluation and community process influenced protocol adoption decisions across the IETF, IAB, IANA, and regional registries, shaping long-term planning by Internet Society and research funders like NSF and DARPA. Its outputs informed engineering practices at major vendors such as Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Sun Microsystems, IBM, and Microsoft, guided operational policy at ARIN, RIPE NCC, and APNIC, and seeded academic research at institutions including MIT, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, University College London, and ETH Zurich. The group's legacy persists in subsequent protocol work, standards evolution within the IETF, and in internet governance discussions at forums including ICANN, IGF, ITU, and World Summit on the Information Society.