Protocol Action: Extensions to RIP to Support Demand Circuits to Proposed Standard

[IESG Secretary <[e-mail]>]

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft "Extensions to RIP to Support
Demand Circuits" <draft-meyer-demandrouting-03.txt> as a Proposed
Standard. This document was an individual submission, but has been
reviewed by the RIP Version 2 Working Group. The IESG contact person is
Bob Hinden.

The IESG has also reviewed the Internet-Draft "Protocol Analysis for
Extensions to RIP to Support Demand Circuits"
<draft-meyer-rip-analysis-02.txt> and recommends that it be published
by the RFC Editor as an Informational RFC.


Technical Summary

Running routing protocols on connection oriented Public Data Networks,
for example X.25 packet switched networks or ISDN, can be expensive if
the standard form of periodic broadcasting of routing information is
adhered to. The high cost arises because a connection has to all
practical intents and purposes be kept open to every destination to
which routing information is to be sent, whether or not it is being
used to carry user data.

Routing information may also fail to be propagated if the number of
destinations to which the routing information is to be sent exceeds the
number of channels available to the router on the Wide Area Network.

This document defines a generalized modification which can be applied
to Bellman-Ford (or distance vector) algorithm information broadcasting
protocols, for example IP RIP, Netware RIP or Netware SAP, which
overcomes the limitations of the traditional methods described above.
The routing protocols support a purely triggered update mechanism on
demand circuits on WANs. The protocols run UNMODIFIED on LANs or fixed
point-to-point links.


Working Group Summary

The work was originally submitted to the IESG for standardization by
Gerry Meyer of Spider Systems.  It was reviewed by the routing
directorate and given to the RIP working group, chaired by Gary Malkin,
for review and possible modification.  The current documents represent
the output of this process.

Protocol Quality

This work was reviewed by members of the routing directorate and by the
IETF RIP working group.  There is a general consensus that this should
be made a proposed standard.  The analysis of the protocol as required
RFC-1264 "Internet Engineering Task Force Internet Routing Protocol
Standardization Criteria" is described in "Protocol  Analysis for
Extensions to RIP to Support Demand Circuits"
<draft-meyer-rip-analysis-02.txt>