minutes of RIPv2 meeting in Amsterdam

[Gary Scott Malkin <[e-mail]>]

CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Gary Malkin/Xylogics, Inc.

Minutes of the RIP Version II Working Group (RIPV2)


Status Update


Chairpersons		Gary Scott Malkin / [e-mail]

Mailing List		ietf-rip(-request)@xylogics.com
Archives		xylogics.com:gmalkin/rip/rip-arc

Date of meeting		Amsterdam IETF / July 13, 1993

Progress		Re-activated WG to purse RIP-2's evolution in
			the standards track and consider Gerry Meyer's
			Demand Circuit RIP Internet Draft.

Agenda

	1 - Review Charter
	2 - Review RFC 1388 (protocol spec)
	3 - Review RFC 1389 (MIB)
	4 - Review implementation experience
	5 - Review the Demand Routing specification
	6 - Summary of decisions and actions

The charter was approved as written.

The use of the Routing Domain in RIP-2 is still unclear.  It was
determined that the use of the field could not be sufficiently well
defined to meet the varying needs of those few people who would like to
use it.  The field also poses difficult MIB problems (discussed below).
Therefore, it has been decided to remove the field from the protocol
and leave a Must Be Zero field in its place.  Presumably, a motivated
person could propose a third version of RIP which would define the use
of this field.  This change does not, to the knowledge of those
attending the meeting, invalidate any existing implementations and may
therefore be made without requiring the specification to remain at the
Proposed Standard level.

There were two proposed changes to the MIB.  The first was to deprecate
the Routing Domain object.  It has been pointed out that the tables
cannot be indexed correctly unless the Routing Domain object was used
as part of the index.  Given that the Routing Domain field is not well
defined, this change will result in an overall simplification of the
MIB.  The second proposal dealt with handling unnumbered interfaces.
While the RIP-2 protocol does not expressly address them, their
existance does require consideration since the MIB tables cannot be
indexed properly with unnumbered interfaces.  The proposal is to use a
network number of zero and a host number of if_index to create a
suitable IP address for use in indexing tables.  These changes do not,
to the knowledge of those attending the meeting, invalidate any
existing implementations and may therefore be made without requiring
the specification to remain at the Proposed Standard level.

There are currently two indepedent implementations of RIP-2: gated and
Xylogics's routed.  The MIB has been implemented for gated.  ACC has a
partial implementation of RIP-2 and is planning to implement the
remainder.

Gerry Meyer's Demand Routing proposal was discussed at length.  It was
agreed that it performed a useful function.  However, Robert Ullman
pointed out that it simulated many of the functions of TCP and that RAP
used TCP.  Robert and Gerry will continue the discussion after Gerry
has had an opertunity to read the RAP RFC.  The slides from Gerry's
presentation are included in these Proceedings.