P. Internet Protocol
charter-ietf-pip-01

The PIP Working Group is chartered to develop an IPng proposal using
the basic ideas of PIP as described in the PIP overview.

PIP is designed on one hand to be very general, being able to handle
many routing/addressing/flow paradigms, but on the other hand to allow
for relatively fast forwarding. PIP has the potential to allow for
better evolution of the Internet. In particular, it is hoped that we
will be able to advance routing, addressing, and flow techniques
without necessarily having to change hosts (once hosts are running
PIP).

While the PIP overview demonstrates a number of powerful mechanisms,
much work remains to be done to bring PIP to a full specification.
This work includes, but is not limited to, specifying the header
format; specifying a basic set of error messages (PCMP messages);
specifying the PIP forwarding rules; specifying host interface messages
(particularly the directory service query response); specifying rules
for host PIP header construction; specifying modifications to existing
protocols for use with PIP (BGP-4, OSPF, ARP, DNS, etc.); specifying
PIP MTU discovery techniques; and specifying a transition strategy
for PIP.

Over the near-term, the goal of the PIP Working Group will be to produce these
specifications and supporting documentation. Over the long-term, up to
the point where PIP is definitively rejected as IPng, it is expected
that the PIP Working Group will oversee implementations and testing of the PIP
specifications.

Except to the extent that the PIP Working Group modifies existing protocols for
operation with PIP, and to the extent that the PIP Working Group must be aware of routing/addressing/flow architectures to really make PIP general, the
PIP Working Group will not work on routing/addresing/flow architectures.