Draft minutes of the Boston IPAE BOF

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

Bob, et al,

Here is my feable (feebel?) attempt to record salient aspects of the
BOF.  I didn't take notes, so I didn't really catch much detail.  Hence,
anyone with details to add should do so.

The problem is that I am going to be off-net until Friday and Megan
Davies, at NRI, needs the minutes ASAP.  (The delay is my fault.  Sorry.)
Hence, please send your comments to Bob, for inclusion by the end of
Monday.

Craig -- I think it would be a Good Thing to issue your implementation
notes as an Internet Draft and record its name in the BOF minutes.

Thanks

Dave

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The IP Address Encapsulation (IPAE) BOF was a 3-hour session on Thursday
morning, 9 July.  Approximately 100 people attended.

Bob Hinden gave a summary presentation of the goals and approach for solving the
IP address-space limitation problem by use of an encapsulation technique which
adds fields for new, globally unique addresses in a mini-layer above IP but
below transport.  A technical proposal was previously submitted as an Internet
Draft (draft-crocker-ip-encaps-00.txt) and copies were provided.  The handouts
also included an initial assessment of implementation issues for BSD Unix, by
Craig Partridge.

A key point in the questioning was the absence of a detailed proposal for the
specific addressing scheme to be used.  The current IPAE proposal constrains the
last 4 octets of the larger, global addresses to be old-style IP addresses, but
no other contraints or details were provided.  While this was intentional, it
was clear that the audience desired to have a concrete proposal.  A separate
effort to develop an addressing proposal has since begun as a sub-effort of the
IPAE team.

The IPAE approach has as its main operational goal to limit impact on the
installed base.  It does this by defining the Internet to comprise a set of
addressing "commonwealths" each with its own 32-bit address space.  Within a
commonwealth, classic IP always will be used.  So, routers within the
commonwealth and hosts which need to communicate only within that commonwealth
will be able to conduct their business using old-style IP and require no change.

It was observed that this can turn segments of the Internet into isolated
"islands".  However, such islands are already part of the operational Internet,
since some organizations operate that way for security purposes.  Further, only
hosts need to upgrade.  It is intended that interior router will not need to.

The BOF was intended to test the waters for forming a working group, as well as
report on work-to-date.  It was generally agreed that the working group should
be formed.  It intends to develop a complete specification for the core changes,
a complete specification for an addressing scheme, and a specification of the
procedures and mechanisms that will be needed to permit transition and
coexistence for IP and IPAE.