Internetworking Over NBMA
charter-ietf-ion-01

Note: This Working Group is jointly chartered by the Routing Area.
The Routing Area Director: Joel Halpern (jhalpern@newbridge.com)

Motivation

The Internetworking Over NBMA Working Group was formed to combine the
work of two previous working groups, IP Over ATM (ipatm) and Routing
Over Large Clouds (rolc), because these two groups were often working
very closely together on similar, if not identical, problems and
solutions. The group will be evolutionary, not revolutionary; it will
continue the work in the previous groups on the NBMA Next Hop
Resolution Protocol (NHRP), IPv4 over ATM, and IPv6 over ATM.

Description

This WG will focus on the issues involved in internetworking network
layer protocols over NBMA (non-broadcast multiple access) subnetwork
technologies, such as ATM, Frame Relay, SMDS, and X.25 private and
public networks. The group will endeavor to make all its solutions
applicable to the entire range of network layer protocols and NBMA
subnetworks. We recognize, however, that there will be cases where
specific optimizations to IPv4, IPv6, and particular subnetwork
technologies will result in better service to the user.

The group will focus on protocols for encapsulation, multicasting,
addressing, address resolution and neighbor discovery, interactions
with and optimization of internetworking-layer routing protocols when
run over NBMA subnetworks, and protocol-specific network management
support, as appropriate. The working group will submit these
protocols for standardization.

The working group may also produce experimental and informational
documents, including "Best Current Practices" guidelines, as
required.

For ATM, the WG will continue the ipatm WG's transition from the LIS
model described in RFC 1577 to the generalized NHRP model developed by
the rolc WG, including a transition plan for existing networks.

The working group will coordinate its activities with the following
other working groups:

1) Integrated Services over Specific Lower Layers (issll), for
coordinating Quality of Service (QoS) issues and the implementation
of IP integrated services capabilities (RSVP, the service models,
etc.) over NBMA networks.

2) IP Next Generation (ipng), for IPv6 over ATM coordination.

The working group will also coordinate its work with other relevant
standards bodies (e.g., ATM Forum, Frame Relay Forum, ANSI T1S1,
ITU-T) and make recommendations to these organizations regarding the
requirements for IP internetworking where the current published
subnetwork standards, practices, or functionality do not meet the
needs of internetworking.

The working group will not develop subnetwork layer standards.