IDPR as a Proposed Standard
RFC 1477

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Network Working Group                                     M. Steenstrup
Request for Comments: 1477                 BBN Systems and Technologies
                                                              July 1993

                      IDPR as a Proposed Standard

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.

1.  Introduction

   This document contains a discussion of inter-domain policy routing
   (IDPR), including an overview of functionality and a discussion of
   experiments.  The objective of IDPR is to construct and maintain
   routes between source and destination administrative domains, that
   provide user traffic with the services requested within the
   constraints stipulated for the domains transited.

   Four documents describe IDPR in detail:

      M. Steenstrup.  An architecture for inter-domain policy routing.
      RFC 1478.  July 1993.

      M. Steenstrup.  Inter-domain policy routing protocol
      specification: version 1.  RFC 1479.  July 1993.

      H. Bowns and M. Steenstrup.  Inter-domain policy routing
      configuration and usage.  Work in Progress.  July 1991.

      R. Woodburn.  Definitions of managed objects for inter-domain
      policy routing (version 1).  Work in Progress.  March 1993.

   This is a product of the Inter-Domain Policy Routing Working Group of
   the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

2.  The Internet Environment

   As data communications technologies evolve and user populations grow,
   the demand for internetworking increases.  The Internet currently
   comprises over 7000 operational networks and over 10,000 registered
   networks.  In fact, for the last several years, the number of
   constituent networks has approximately doubled annually.  Although we
   do not expect the Internet to sustain this growth rate, we must
   prepare for the Internet of five to ten years in the future.

Steenstrup                                                      [Page 1]
RFC 1477                         IDPR                          July 1993

   Internet connectivity has increased along with the number of
   component networks.  Internetworks proliferate through
   interconnection of autonomous, heterogeneous networks administered by
   separate authorities.  We use the term "administrative domain" (AD)
   to refer to any collection of contiguous networks, gateways, links,
   and hosts governed by a single administrative authority that selects
   the intra-domain routing procedures and addressing schemes, specifies
   service restrictions for transit traffic, and defines service
   requirements for locally-generated traffic.

   In the early 1980s, the Internet was purely hierarchical, with the
   ARPANET as the single backbone.  The current Internet possesses a
   semblance of a hierarchy in the collection of backbone, regional,
   metropolitan, and campus domains that compose it.  However,
   technological, economical, and political incentives have prompted the
   introduction of inter-domain links outside of those in the strict
   hierarchy.  Hence, the Internet has the properties of both
   hierarchical and mesh connectivity.

   We expect that, over the next five years, the Internet will grow to
   contain O(10) backbone domains, most providing connectivity between
   many source and destination domains and offering a wide range of
   qualities of service, for a fee.  Most domains will connect directly
   or indirectly to at least one Internet backbone domain, in order to
   communicate with other domains.  In addition, some domains may
   install direct links to their most favored destinations.  Domains at
   the lower levels of the hierarchy will provide some transit service,
   limited to traffic between selected sources and destinations.
   However, the majority of Internet domains will be "stubs", that is,
   domains that do not provide any transit service for any other domains
   but that connect directly to one or more transit domains.

   The bulk of Internet traffic will be generated by hosts in the stub
   domains, and thus, the applications running in these hosts will
   determine the traffic service requirements.  We expect application
   diversity encompassing electronic mail, desktop videoconferencing,
   scientific visualization, and distributed simulation, for example.
   Many of these applications have strict requirements on loss, delay,
   and throughput.

   In such a large and heterogeneous Internet, the routing procedures
   must be capable of ensuring that traffic is forwarded along routes
   that offer the required services without violating domain usage
   restrictions.  We believe that IDPR meets this goal; it has been
   designed to accommodate an Internet comprising O(10,000)
   administrative domains with diverse service offerings and
   requirements.

Steenstrup                                                      [Page 2]