page_title: Recursive Internetwork Architecture
section_title: 1983: Internetwork layer lost
hierarchical_section_title: Recursive Internetwork Architecture / Background / 1983: Internetwork layer lost
caption_attribution_description: English: The Internet architecture as seen by the INWG
context_page_description: The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture is a new computer network architecture proposed as an alternative to the architecture of the currently mainstream Internet protocol suite. RINA's fundamental principles are that computer networking is just Inter-Process Communication or IPC, and that layering should be done based on scope/scale, with a single recurring set of protocols, rather than based on function, with specialized protocols. The protocol instances in one layer interface with the protocol instances on higher and lower layers via new concepts and entities that effectively reify networking functions currently specific to protocols like BGP, OSPF and ARP. In this way, RINA claims to support features like mobility, multihoming and Quality of Service without the need for additional specialized protocols like RTP and UDP, as well as to allow simplified network administration without the need for concepts like autonomous systems and NAT.
context_section_description: Early in 1972 the International Networking Working Group (INWG) was created to bring together the nascent network research community. One of the early tasks it accomplished was voting an international network transport protocol, which was approved in 1976. Remarkably, the selected option, as well as all the other candidates, had an architecture composed of three layers of increasing scope: data link (to handle different types of physical media), network (to handle different types of networks) and internetwork (to handle a network of networks), each layer with its own address space. When TCP/IP was introduced it ran at the internetwork layer on top of the NCP. But when NCP was shut down, TCP/IP took the network role and the internetwork layer was lost. This explains the need for autonomous systems and NAT today, to partition and reuse ranges of the IP address space to facilitate administration.
caption: Figure 2. The Internet architecture as seen by the INWG
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