Ipng, Internet Protocol Next Generation - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0201633957 ISBN 13: 9780201633955

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional, 1996

Synopsis

The development of the next generation of the Internet Protocol, which will allow for the continued expansion of the Internet, is one of the most significant developments in the history of the communications industry.
This book is written by members of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and others to explain the history and outcome of their efforts in developing the IPng technology. Delivered in a narrative style, the book offers an inside view of the rationale behind IPng and reveals its ramifications across a wide array of industries.
You will find reviews of the IPng proposals and an overview of the technical criteria and the resulting current IPv6 protocol. In addition, industry and technical perspectives explore the impact of IPng on such areas as military applications, cable TV, large corporate networking, and more.
Required reading for anyone in data communications, as well as corporate managers and technical professionals in nearly every field, this book will give you a broad perspective on the forces shaping the Internet and a fascinating glimpse into the coming era of communications technology.

About this title

About the Author:

Bradner is Senior Consultant for Harvard University, Transport Area Director IETF, trustee of the Internet Society, and ISOC VP of Standards.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The Internet is about to become a victim of its own success.

The projection in the fall of 1991 that the Internet, with the capacity to support many millions of users, was beginning to run out of available network addresses was quite a bit of a surprise. The projection was quickly followed by numerous articles in the trade press announcing the imminent demise of what had been a promising technology.

Many groups were ready with alternatives to fix the problem. Network protocols from various official standards organizations and proprietary protocols from a number of vendors were presented as solutions that could provide a foundation for a glorious future of ubiquitous networking.

This speculation caused more than a little consternation within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the organization responsible for keeping the standards of the TCP/IP protocol suite used by the Internet. In the face of all this "end of the world as we know it" talk, the IETF felt it needed to determine just what was truly happening, and, if there was in fact a problem, what should be done about it.

When the initial investigation confirmed the basic diagnosis, the IETF undertook a multi-pronged effort to devise a replacement for the current version of the Internet protocol, IPv4. This effort sought not just to solve the immediate address limitation and scaling problems, but to look into the Internet's future and develop a protocol that would serve its needs for many years to come.

This book offers an inside view of the process the IETF used in its successful effort to define the issues, and provides an overview of the resulting Internet Protocol next generation (IPng). Along the way, the book reveals the rationale behind the structure and features of IPng, presenting numerous explorations of applications and technologies IPng could potentially support.

Audience

This book has been written so that it can be easily understood by anyone with a basic understanding of networking and communications. Those who would benefit from this book include: managers of technical organizations, networking professionals, technology watchers, those with a stake in the growing on-line commerce industry, and anyone with an interest in the Internet prototype of the Information Superhighway.

Organization

Part I provides the background on issues and problems facing the Internet. Part II describes the process which the IETF used to develop the new protocol; and Part III examines the all-important time frame for developing IPng.

Next, the book turns to the outside perspective of the wider networking community, with contributions from numerous industry experts.

Part IV explores the potential role of IPng in the future of communications, and Part V, the innovative technologies IPng should consider embracing.

Part VI contains the technical criteria for judging IPng proposals - culled from all of the preceding discussions, issues, and contributive perspectives.

The IPng proposals are presented and evaluated against the technical criteria in Part VII.

All of the preceding sections culminate in Part VIII, the overview of the selected IPng proposal, the new IPv6 Internet protocol.

In Part IX, the critical issue of security is discussed, and in Part X, the ongoing process of developing the protocol in greater detail is outlined.

Sources

Much of the material in the book has been adapted from the Internet standard and documentation series known as Request for Comments (RFCs). The material has been reworked, with the authors' assistance, to make it more accessible to a general audience while retaining the technical detail inherent in the original work. Also included are a number of new pieces written specifically for this book.

Acknowledgements

Reaching this stage of the recommendation would not have been even vaguely possible without the efforts of many people. In particular, the work of the IPng Directorate, Frank Kastenholz and Craig Partridge (the authors of the Criteria document) along with Jon Crowcroft (who co-chaired the ngreq BOF) was critical. The work and cooperation of the chairs, members, and document authors of the three IPng proposal working groups, the ALE Working Group and the TACIT Working Group laid the groundwork upon which this recommendation sits.

We would also like to thank the many people who took the time to respond to RFC-1550 and who provided the broad understanding of the many requirements of data networking that any proposal for an IPng must address.

The members of the IESG, the IAB, and the always active participants in the various mailing lists provided us with many insights into the issues we faced. Many other individuals gave us sometimes spirited but always useful counsel during this process. They include (in no particular order) Radia Perlman, Noel Chiappa, Peter Ford, Dave Crocker, Tony Li, Dave Piscitello, Vint Cerf, and Dan Lynch.

Thanks to David Williams and Cheryl Chapman who, along with the very hard-working Addison-Wesley technical editors: Abigail Cooper and Kate Habib, took on the occasionally impossible task of ensuring that what is written here resembles English to some degree.

This book would have never happened without the perserverance and astonishingly good humor in the face of changing realities of Carol Long, our Executive Editor at Addison-Wesley.

To all the many people mentioned above and those we have skipped in our forgetfulness, thank you for making this task doable.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0201633957
• ISBN 13: 9780201633955
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 315
• Editor: Bradner Scott O., Mankin Allison