Architectural Principles of the Internet
RFC 1958
Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(June 1996; No errata)
Updated by RFC 3439
Was draft-iab-principles (individual)
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Author | Brian Carpenter | ||
Last updated | 2019-05-10 | ||
Stream | Legacy stream | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized (tools) htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | Legacy state | (None) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 1958 (Informational) | |
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | (None) | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Network Working Group B. Carpenter, Editor Request for Comments: 1958 IAB Category: Informational June 1996 Architectural Principles of the Internet Status of This Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract The Internet and its architecture have grown in evolutionary fashion from modest beginnings, rather than from a Grand Plan. While this process of evolution is one of the main reasons for the technology's success, it nevertheless seems useful to record a snapshot of the current principles of the Internet architecture. This is intended for general guidance and general interest, and is in no way intended to be a formal or invariant reference model. Table of Contents 1. Constant Change..............................................1 2. Is there an Internet Architecture?...........................2 3. General Design Issues........................................4 4. Name and address issues......................................5 5. External Issues..............................................6 6. Related to Confidentiality and Authentication................6 Acknowledgements................................................7 References......................................................7 Security Considerations.........................................8 Editor's Address................................................8 1. Constant Change In searching for Internet architectural principles, we must remember that technical change is continuous in the information technology industry. The Internet reflects this. Over the 25 years since the ARPANET started, various measures of the size of the Internet have increased by factors between 1000 (backbone speed) and 1000000 (number of hosts). In this environment, some architectural principles inevitably change. Principles that seemed inviolable a few years ago are deprecated today. Principles that seem sacred today will be deprecated tomorrow. The principle of constant change is perhaps the only principle of the Internet that should survive indefinitely. IAB Informational [Page 1] RFC 1958 Architectural Principles of the Internet June 1996 The purpose of this document is not, therefore, to lay down dogma about how Internet protocols should be designed, or even about how they should fit together. Rather, it is to convey various guidelines that have been found useful in the past, and that may be useful to those designing new protocols or evaluating such designs. A good analogy for the development of the Internet is that of constantly renewing the individual streets and buildings of a city, rather than razing the city and rebuilding it. The architectural principles therefore aim to provide a framework for creating cooperation and standards, as a small "spanning set" of rules that generates a large, varied and evolving space of technology. Some current technical triggers for change include the limits to the scaling of IPv4, the fact that gigabit/second networks and multimedia present fundamentally new challenges, and the need for quality of service and security guarantees in the commercial Internet. As Lord Kelvin stated in 1895, "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." We would be foolish to imagine that the principles listed below are more than a snapshot of our current understanding. 2. Is there an Internet Architecture? 2.1 Many members of the Internet community would argue that there is no architecture, but only a tradition, which was not written down for the first 25 years (or at least not by the IAB). However, in very general terms, the community believes that the goal is connectivity, the tool is the Internet Protocol, and the intelligence is end to end rather than hidden in the network. The current exponential growth of the network seems to show that connectivity is its own reward, and is more valuable than any individual application such as mail or the World-Wide Web. This connectivity requires technical cooperation between service providers, and flourishes in the increasingly liberal and competitive commercial telecommunications environment. The key to global connectivity is the inter-networking layer. The key to exploiting this layer over diverse hardware providing global connectivity is the "end to end argument". 2.2 It is generally felt that in an ideal situation there should be one, and only one, protocol at the Internet level. This allows for uniform and relatively seamless operations in a competitive, multi-Show full document text