RFC 1673

Electric Power Research Institute Comments on IPng ✨

Okay bestie, this is RFC 1673 💖 It was written by R. Skelton (that's Ron Skelton from EPRI 🎀) for the Network Working Group, in August 1994. It's an Informational doc, and the header doesn't list any RFCs it obsoletes or updates, so it's standalone commentary. 💅

Status of This Memo 🌸

This memo is here to give info to the Internet community 🫶 It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind, so it's not a spec you have to follow. Distribution is unlimited, so share it with everyone 🦋

Abstract 🧚

This doc was sent to the IETF IPng area as a response to RFC 1550. Publishing it doesn't mean the IPng area agrees with any of the ideas in here 🙈 Comments should be submitted to the big-internet@munnari.oz.au mailing list.

Executive Summary 👑

So, the future of the Internet Protocol (IP) is a huge deal, like national if not international levels 😭 It's critical for building a National Information Infrastructure, kinda like how railways, highways and electricity became the basic standards for the industrial era 🚂

EPRI is a non-profit with 700 voluntary utility members. It runs a technical R&D program for the electric utility industry to improve power production, distribution and use. The electric power industry is a major user of computing and communications and is fully committed to open systems 🔌

Right now the industry is a heavy user of the Internet Protocol Suite (IPS), but it's following a long term strategy based on international standards from ISO and CCITT, plus national standards from IEEE, ANSI and other standards bodies that use formal review and voting procedures 🗳️

That strategy came from a survey of needs across every part of the electrical power supply enterprise. It concluded these needs are met more effectively by the current suite of OSI protocols and the international standards still under development. So EPRI made the Utility Communications Architecture (UCA) specification for communications, and the Database Access Integrated Services specification for data exchange, both based on the OSI model and international standards 🧠

Those specs got folded into the Industry Government Open Systems Specification (IGOSS), and they're getting a favorable response from the industry and its suppliers. They also have support from the natural gas and waterworks industries 🔥

The Internet community is dealing with growth and the address and routing limits of IP, and honestly that's the perfect moment to create a national uniform information transport superhighway 🛣️ This is critical to the NII Agenda. The only proposal that will achieve this goal is one that's acceptable from both private and public sector viewpoints, with both a national and an international perspective 🇺🇸

EPRI also thinks new requirements need to be achieved through convergence of efforts to develop additional standards 🤝 Security, directory services, network management, and the ability to support real-time applications are four examples where new convergent standards efforts are required.

Just like society couldn't accept multiple standards for the gauge of the nation's railways, we can no longer accept multiple standards for information transport 🚂✨

Engineering Considerations 🛠️

1. Mandatory Requirement. Inter networking must evolve to give us an industrial strength computing and communications environment for multiple uses of globally connected network resources 🌍 Specifically, the underlying transport must provide high integrity support for upper layer industrial OSI applications, including but not limited to MMS and TP. Using interface layers like RFC 1006 is not acceptable, except as a transition strategy 🙅‍♀️
2. Basic Requirements.
   • Scaleability: The addressing scheme must have essentially an unlimited address space so it can encompass an arbitrarily large number of information objects 🌌 Specifically, it must solve the fundamental limitations of 32 bit formats, and a format for 20 octets and above is considered suitable.
   • Routing table economy: Network addressing must achieve significant economy in routing database size with very large networks 📉
   • Support for the existing Internet: The existing internetworking paradigm and existing OSI and IPS applications are to be supported 🫶
3. Key Engineering Considerations - A pragmatic solution.
   • Available now: The solution must be available now, using mature, internationally agreed standards and off-the-shelf implementations for hosts and routers ⏰ The solution must leverage existing investments in standards development, deployment and experience, while at the same time providing for all basic requirements.
   • Ease of Transition: Any solution must provide an evolutionary transition path using an OSI 🦋
   • IP dual network layer strategy: This must be achievable without modifications to existing inter-domain routing protocols, while still providing the ability to support proprietary protocols such as IPX and Appletalk 🧩 The scheme must provide the ability to encompass other addressing schemes such as X.121 and E.164. Existing SNMP and CMIP MIBs must be applicable and available. Internet domain names need to be retained 🌈
   • Routing effectiveness: This key objective requires features such as route aggregation, service selection, and low frequency host advertisements. Host routing intelligence should not be required 🧠
   • Flexible Efficient Administration: Operational needs will need to be met in an economic and flexible manner. Addressing allocations can be geographically based, based on carrier ID, or both, and they will be administered by policy, not network topology 📋 Simplified and robust configurability is required, which includes the ability to identify resources, e.g., multi-homed hosts and applications, instead of interfaces 💜
   • Mobility: Dynamic addressing is required where hosts can learn their own network address with the minimum of human intervention 🧚

Security Considerations 🔐

Okay, real talk, the whole security section is one line: "Security isses are not discussed in this memo." 💀 Yes, that typo is in the original 😭 So security isn't covered in this memo at all. Take that as a big red flag and go look at security somewhere else 🚨

Author's Address 🎀

Ron Skelton, Member of Technical Staff, Advanced IT Group, Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto CA 94303. Email: RSKELTON@msm.epri.com 💌