New Internet Routing and Addressing Architecture (nimrod)
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Charter
Last Modified: 04/07/1998
Current Status: Concluded Working Group
Chair(s):
J. Noel Chiappa <jnc@lcs.mit.edu>
Isidro Castineyra <isidro@bbn.com>
David Bridgham <dab=ietf@epilogue.com>
Routing Area Director(s):
Bill Fenner <fenner@research.att.com>
Alex Zinin <zinin@psg.com>
Routing Area Advisor:
<0>
Mailing Lists:
General Discussion:nimrod-wg@bbn.com
To Subscribe: nimrod-wg-request@bbn.com
Archive: ftp://bbn.com/pub/nimrod-wg/nimrod-wg.archive
Description of Working Group:
The goal of the working group is to design, specify, implement and test a
flexible new routing and addressing architecture suitable for very large
scale internets. The basic architecture for computation of routes will
be based on distribution of network topology maps, with source-specified
route selection, and unitary (i.e., not hop-by-hop) computation of routes.
The architecture will provide a single homogeneous framework for all
routing, including both inter-domain and intra-domain. It will include a
new network component naming abstraction hierarchy, starting from network
attachment points, and based on actual connectivity, but taking into
consideration policy requirements. These new names will be variable
length, with a variable number of levels of abstraction; they will not
appear in most packets, though.
Actual packet forwarding will be based both on retained non-critical
state in the switches (via flow setup for long-lived communications), and
both classical address-only, as well as source-route type instructions, in
individual packets (for datagram applications which send only one, or a very
few, packets).
Although the general design and algorithms will be usable in any
internetworking protocol family, the initial detailed protocol
specifications and implementation are currently planned for deployment
with IPv4, but support for another packet format may be substituted or
added, depending on the situation in the Internet in the future.
Interoperabilty with existing unmodified IPv4 hosts will be achieved by
re-interpreting the existing source and destination fields in IPv4
packets as endpoint identifiers.
A substantial effort to take into account support for mobility,
multicast and resource allocation will be made when designing the Nimrod
architecture; provided that so doing is neither impossible because of
incomplete work outside the scope of Nimrod, nor the cause of very
substantial delays in the first iteration of the protocol design.
Goals and Milestones:
Done Complete the review and discussion of the fundamentals of
the routing and addressing architecture.
Done Produce a draft architecture document, which will also
serve as an in-depth introduction to Nimrod.
Done Issue Internet-Drafts containing the design of the basic
routing and addressing architecture and protocols.
Done Commence project.
SEP 94 Produce a first version of the protocol specification,
which embodies the completed basic routing and addressing
architecture. Issue this document as an Internet-Draft.
NOV 94 Finish design of all the detailed mechanisms, including
sample algorithms for those parts which are outside the
core specification. Issue an Internet-Draft describing
these.
DEC 94 Issue a usage guide as an Internet-Draft. This guide will
describe recommended clustering strategies and
configurations.
JUL 95 Finish an initial prototype protocol implementation,
suitable for experimentation within the Internet, to allow
field trials.
OCT 95 Complete an initial field trial of the prototype protocol
and implementation.
JUL 96 After assessing the performance of the protocols and sample
algorithms, based on operational experience, release an
updated protocol specification and sample algorithms.
Internet-Drafts:
No Current Internet-Drafts.
Request For Comments:
RFC Stat Published Title
------- -- ----------- ------------------------------------
RFC1992 I AUG 96 The Nimrod Routing Architecture
RFC2103 I FEB 97 Mobility Support for Nimrod : Challenges and
Solution Approaches
RFC2102 I FEB 97 Multicast Support for Nimrod : Requirements and
Solution Approaches