IESG Deliberations on Routing and Addressing
RFC 1380

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Network Working Group                                           P. Gross
Request for Comments: 1380                                    IESG Chair
                                                             P. Almquist
                                                        IESG Internet AD
                                                           November 1992

              IESG Deliberations on Routing and Addressing

Status Of This Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard.  Distribution of this memo is
   unlimited.

Abstract

   This memo summarizes issues surrounding the routing and addressing
   scaling problems in the IP architecture, and it provides a brief
   background of the ROAD group and related activities in the Internet
   Engineering Task Force (IETF).

   It also provides a preliminary report of the Internet Engineering
   Steering Group (IESG) deliberations on how these routing and
   addressing issues should be pursued in the Internet Architecture
   Board (IAB)/IETF.

Acknowledgements

   This note draws principally from two sources: the output from the
   ROAD group, as reported at the San Diego IETF meeting, and on
   numerous detailed discussions in the IESG following the San Diego
   IETF meeting.  Zheng Wang, Bob Hinden, Kent England, and Bob Smart
   provided input for the "Criteria For Bigger Internet Addresses"
   section below.  Greg Vaudreuil prepared the final version of the
   bibliography, based on previous bibliographies by Lyman Chapin and
   bibliographies distributed on the Big-Internet mailing list.

Table of Contents

   1. INTRODUCTION..................................................  2
   2.  ISSUES OF GROWTH AND EVOLUTION IN THE INTERNET...............  3
   2.1  The Problems................................................  3
   2.2  Possible Solutions..........................................  5
   3. PREPARING FOR ACTION..........................................  7
   3.1 The IAB Architecture Retreats................................  7
   3.2 The Santa Fe IETF............................................  7
   3.3 The ROAD Group and beyond....................................  8

Gross & Almquist                                                [Page 1]
RFC 1380                          ROAD                     November 1992

   4. SETTING DIRECTIONS FOR THE IETF............................... 10
   4.1 The Need For Interim Solutions............................... 10
   4.2 The Proposed Phases.......................................... 10
   4.3 A Solution For Routing Table Explosion -- CIDR............... 12
   4.4 Regarding "IP Address Exhaustion"............................ 13
   4.5 Milestones And Timetable For Making a Recommendation for
       "Bigger Internet Addresses".................................. 14
   5. SUMMARY....................................................... 15
   Appendix A. FOR MORE INFORMATION................................. 16
   Appendix B. INFORMATION AND SELECTION CRITERIA FOR "BIGGER
               INTERNET ADDRESSES".................................. 16
   Appendix C. BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................... 20
   Security Considerations.......................................... 21
   Authors' Addresses............................................... 22

1. INTRODUCTION

   It seems unlikely that the designers of IP ever imagined at the time
   what phenomenal success the Internet would achieve.  Internet
   connections were initially intended primarily for mainframe computers
   at sites performing DARPA-sponsored research.  Now, of course, the
   Internet has extended its reach to the desktop and is beginning to
   extend into the home.  No longer the exclusive purview of pure R&D
   establishments, the Internet has become well entrenched in parts of
   the corporate world and is beginning to make inroads into secondary
   and even primary schools.  While once it was an almost exclusively
   U.S. phenomenon, the Internet now extends to every continent and
   within a few years may well include network connections in every
   country.

   Over the past couple of years, we have seen increasingly strong
   indications that all of this success will stress the limits of IP
   unless appropriate corrective actions are taken.  The supply of
   unallocated Class B network numbers is rapidly dwindling, and the
   amount of routing information now carried in the Internet is
   increasingly taxing the abilities of both the routers and the people
   who have to manage them.  Somewhat longer-term, it is possible that
   we will run out of host addresses or network numbers altogether.

   While these problems could be avoided by attempting to restrict the
   growth of the Internet, most people would prefer solutions that allow
   growth to continue.  Fortunately, it appears that such solutions are
   possible, and that, in fact, our biggest problem is having too many