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Info<br>RFC 1958: Architectural Principles of the Internet<br>B. Carpenter, Ed.<br>Informational
This RFC was updated, see RFC 3439.
Network Working Group B. Carpenter, Editor<br>Request for Comments: 1958 IAB<br>Category: Informational June 1996
Architectural Principles of the Internet
Status of This Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo<br>does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of<br>this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
The Internet and its architecture have grown in evolutionary fashion<br>from modest beginnings, rather than from a Grand Plan. While this<br>process of evolution is one of the main reasons for the technology's<br>success, it nevertheless seems useful to record a snapshot of the<br>current principles of the Internet architecture. This is intended for<br>general guidance and general interest, and is in no way intended to<br>be a formal or invariant reference model.
Table of Contents
1. Constant Change..............................................1<br>2. Is there an Internet Architecture?...........................2<br>3. General Design Issues........................................4<br>4. Name and address issues......................................5<br>5. External Issues..............................................6<br>6. Related to Confidentiality and Authentication................6<br>Acknowledgements................................................7<br>References......................................................7<br>Security Considerations.........................................8<br>Editor's Address................................................8
1. Constant Change
In searching for Internet architectural principles, we must remember<br>that technical change is continuous in the information technology<br>industry. The Internet reflects this. Over the 25 years since the<br>ARPANET started, various measures of the size of the Internet have<br>increased by factors between 1000 (backbone speed) and 1000000<br>(number of hosts). In this environment, some architectural principles<br>inevitably change. Principles that seemed inviolable a few years ago<br>are deprecated today. Principles that seem sacred today will be<br>deprecated tomorrow. The principle of constant change is perhaps the<br>only principle of the Internet that should survive indefinitely.
IAB Informational [Page 1]
RFC 1958 Architectural Principles of the Internet June 1996
The purpose of this document is not, therefore, to lay down dogma<br>about how Internet protocols should be designed, or even about how<br>they should fit together. Rather, it is to convey various guidelines<br>that have been found useful in the past, and that may be useful to<br>those designing new protocols or evaluating such designs.
A good analogy for the development of the Internet is that of<br>constantly renewing the individual streets and buildings of a city,<br>rather than razing the city and rebuilding it. The architectural<br>principles therefore aim to provide a framework for creating<br>cooperation and standards, as a small "spanning set" of rules that<br>generates a large, varied and evolving space of technology.
Some current technical triggers for change include the limits to the<br>scaling of IPv4, the fact that gigabit/second networks and multimedia<br>present fundamentally new challenges, and the need for quality of<br>service and security guarantees in the commercial Internet.
As Lord Kelvin stated in 1895, "Heavier-than-air flying machines are<br>impossible." We would be foolish to imagine that the principles<br>listed below are more than a snapshot of our current understanding.
2. Is there an Internet Architecture?
2.1 Many members of the Internet community would argue that there is<br>no architecture, but only a tradition, which was not written down for<br>the first 25 years (or at least not by the IAB). However, in very<br>general terms, the community believes that the goal is connectivity,<br>the tool is the Internet Protocol, and the intelligence is end to end<br>rather than hidden in the network.
The current exponential growth of the network seems to show that<br>connectivity is its own reward, and is more valuable than any<br>individual application such as mail or the World-Wide Web. This<br>connectivity requires technical cooperation between service<br>providers, and flourishes in the increasingly liberal and...