Introduction to the Survey of IPv4 Addresses in Currently Deployed IETF Standards Track and Experimental Documents
RFC 3789

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Network Working Group                                      P. Nesser, II
Request for Comments: 3789                    Nesser & Nesser Consulting
Category: Informational                                A. Bergstrom, Ed.
                                              Ostfold University College
                                                               June 2004

            Introduction to the Survey of IPv4 Addresses in
   Currently Deployed IETF Standards Track and Experimental Documents

Status of this Memo

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

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).

Abstract

   This document is a general overview and introduction to the v6ops
   IETF workgroup project of documenting all usage of IPv4 addresses in
   IETF standards track and experimental RFCs.  It is broken into seven
   documents conforming to the current IETF areas.  It also describes
   the methodology used during documentation, which types of RFCs have
   been documented, and provides a concatenated summary of results.

Table of Contents

   1.0.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
         1.1.  Short Historical Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
         1.2.  An Observation on the Classification of Standards. . .  3
   2.0.  Methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
         2.1.  Scope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   3.0.  Summary of Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
         3.1.  Application Area Specifications. . . . . . . . . . . .  5
         3.2.  Internet Area Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
         3.3.  Operations and Management Area Specifications. . . . .  6
         3.4.  Routing Area Specifications. . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
         3.5.  Security Area Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
         3.6.  Sub-IP Area Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
         3.7.  Transport Area Specifications. . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   4.0.  Discussion of "Long Term" Stability of Addresses on
         Protocols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   5.0.  Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   6.0.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8

Nesser II & Bergstrom        Informational                      [Page 1]
RFC 3789      Introduction to the IPv4 Address in the IETF     June 2004

   7.0.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
         7.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   8.0.  Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   9.0.  Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1.0.  Introduction

   This document is the introduction to a document set aiming to
   document all usage of IPv4 addresses in IETF standards.  In an effort
   to have the information in a manageable form, it has been broken into
   7 documents, conforming to the current IETF areas (Application [1],
   Internet [2], Operations and Management [3], Routing [4], Security
   [5], Sub-IP [6], and Transport [7]).  It also describes the
   methodology used during documentation, which types of RFCs that have
   been documented, and provides a concatenated summary of results.

1.1.  Short Historical Perspective

   There are many challenges that face the Internet Engineering
   community.  The foremost of these challenges has been the scaling
   issue: how to grow a network that was envisioned to handle thousands
   of hosts to one that will handle tens of millions of networks with
   billions of hosts.  Over the years, this scaling problem has been
   managed, with varying degrees of success, by changes to the network
   layer and to routing protocols.  (Although largely ignored in the
   changes to network layer and routing protocols, the tremendous
   advances in computational hardware during the past two decades have
   been of significant benefit in management of scaling problems
   encountered thus far.)

   The first "modern" transition to the network layer occurred during
   the early 1980's, moving from the Network Control Protocol (NCP) to
   IPv4.  This culminated in the famous "flag day" of January 1, 1983.
   IP Version 4 originally specified an 8 bit network and 24 bit host
   addresses, as documented in RFC 760.  A year later, IPv4 was updated
   in RFC 791 to include the famous A, B, C, D, and E class system.

   Networks were growing in such a way that it was clear that a
   convention for breaking networks into smaller pieces was needed.  In
   October of 1984 RFC 917 was published formalizing the practice of
   subnetting.

   By the late 1980's, it was clear that the current exterior routing
   protocol used by the Internet (EGP) was insufficiently robust to
   scale with the growth of the Internet.  The first version of BGP was