From: M.Williams@cc.uq.oz.au (Mark I. Williams)
Newsgroups: aus.comms
Subject: Re: Proposal: OSI Addressing on AARnet
Date: 31 Aug 92 03:05:46 GMT


On Wed, 26 Aug 1992, Geoff Huston wrote:

> 2. NSAP AFI allocation
> 
>    I note the Internet Society is eligible for an AFI allocation
>    (at _no_ charge) and evidently intends to obtain an AFI for Internet
>    use. What are the arguments in favour and against using a number space
>    from a nationally allocated AFI vs an Internet AFI

On reflection, I tend to go for the nationally allocated address space for
the following reasons:

(1) Using our own address space, allocated by authorities who are in some
way accountable to us, we stand a better chance of getting what we need.
That is, as far as AUSTEL is concerned, AARNet is the largest
packet-switched network in Australia, funded to the tune of about $5
million per annum by the political masters, etc. etc. As far as the IETF
is concerned, AARNET is a pimple on the bum of networking, populated by
people who have sometimes managed to siphon off research grants in
competition with people who actually fund the IETF. 

In other words, the IETF may well be very nice people, who have our best
interests at heart when they don't conflict with their best interests, and
it is most certainly in our best interests to track closely what they are
doing, but we certainly shouldn't be giving them any more control over our
destiny than they already have. 

(2) The IETF may well take quite a long time to come up with IP V7. I see
no technical reason why we should wait for them to solve their own
internal problems before we start looking for solutions to ours. 

(3) The NSAP type that Mark chose was a subnet-independant NSAP format. As
long as the IETF uses a subnet-independant NSAP type, there should be no
great difficulty in accommodating both NSAP types when the time comes, if
it proves necessary.
	My personal intuition is that we are going to have to have two
separate NSAP spaces anyway, because while the IETF solution may well use
an an ISO 8348 addressing format, the layer 3 protocol will be
incompatible with End-System implementations of CLNP. If this is the case,
we will have to support both formats, and if our CLNP is running in the
IETF address space, we'll have to move it out! 

(4) Any non-internet site, when they see an NSAP with the IETF AFI, will
simply pass the packets to the nearest Internet router to them. This may
well not be what we want to happen. I for one do not want to see
Australian academic networking beholden to the US for transport of its
packets forever. 

Of the considerations above, I think that really (1) and (2) are the most
important. The technical issues are minor in comparison. In fact, It
mostly boils down to (2). There is a need right now to switch OSI packets
to develop OSI applications. Waiting for the IETF to solve our problems
may get us a solution, but it may not be the right solution, and it won't
come at the right time. 

As to the routing protocol, it doesn't really matter if we use static
routes in the short term. The important thing is to allow the applications
to keep working. 

cheers,

Mark

Mark Williams         The University of Queensland       miw@cc.uq.edu.au
+61 7 36 54012   (w)  Prentice Centre
+61 7 36 54477  (fax) Qld 4072  Australia
nil sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus.   -- Horace