Required attributes for transport layer protocols on Internetworks

Fri Oct 14 16:36:07 UTC 2005

Independent of all this discussion we are witnessing regarding to the IPv6
deployment I'd like to write down some high-level requirements for transport
layer protocols in Internetworks (such as the global Internet).

Lets have a look at required attributes of such an ideal transport layer
protocol for Internetworks without regard to any existing protocols:

1) It should have sufficient address space to allow every human and corporation
     on this planet to have all his/her electronic devices online with a unique
     address at the same time.
     [Large address space.]

2) It should have indivdually routeable fixed- or variable sized netblocks.
     [No individual number allocation.  Aggregation of individual addresses
     into routable blocks.]

3) It should function in a global dynamic and automatic routing system based
     on netblocks.
     [BGP or better.]

4) It should have routing of any netblock independent of political or national
     hierarchies or assignments.
     [Aggregation follows the network structure, not political/geographical borders.]

5) It should have globally unique netblocks which are allocated to connectivity
     providers who then redistribute/assign parts to end user connectivity.
     [The delta between address/netblock per individual user vs. routable netblock
     should be larger than 2^12.  Provider aggregation.]

6) It should have globally unique netblocks which are independent of connectivity
     providers and assigned directly to end users with sufficient requirements.
     [Provider independent address space.  This address space may or may not be
     directly routable.]

7) It should have minimum requirements for netblocks in size and aggregation to
     participate in the global routing system.
     [Minimum allocation.]

8) It should restrict itself entirely to the transport layer (OSI layer 3).
     [No source routing, flow labels and such.  That's the job of layer 2.5.]

9) It should only be used for transport layer purposes.
     [Only for packet forwarding.  No additional meaning as in phone numbers, etc.]

10) KISS.  Keep it simple, stupid.
      [If it takes $10k worth of courses to understand it's unsuitable.]

When going through this list we see a couple of points in which IPv4 and IPv6
fail miserably.

Food for thought.  Get the discussion started.

--
Andre