rfc3869
Network Working Group R. Atkinson, Ed.
Request for Comments: 3869 S. Floyd, Ed.
Category: Informational Internet Architecture Board
August 2004
IAB Concerns and Recommendations
Regarding Internet Research and Evolution
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).
Abstract
This document discusses IAB concerns that ongoing research is needed
to further the evolution of the Internet infrastructure, and that
consistent, sufficient non-commercial funding is needed to enable
such research.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Document Organization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2. IAB Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3. Contributions to this Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. History of Internet Research and Research Funding. . . . . . . 4
2.1. Prior to 1980. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. 1980s and early 1990s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3. Mid-1990s to 2003. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.4. Current Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Open Internet Research Topics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.1. Scope and Limitations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2. Naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.1. Domain Name System (DNS). . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.2. New Namespaces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3. Routing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3.1. Inter-domain Routing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3.2. Routing Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3.3. Routing Algorithms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.3.4. Mobile and Ad-Hoc Routing . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.4. Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
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3.4.1. Formal Methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.4.2. Key Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.4.3. Cryptography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.4.4. Security for Distributed Computing. . . . . . . 15
3.4.5. Deployment Considerations in Security . . . . . 15
3.4.6. Denial of Service Protection. . . . . . . . . . 16
3.5. Network Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.5.1. Managing Networks, Not Devices. . . . . . . . . 16
3.5.2. Enhanced Monitoring Capabilities. . . . . . . . 17
3.5.3. Customer Network Management . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.5.4. Autonomous Network Management . . . . . . . . . 17
3.6. Quality of Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.6.1. Inter-Domain QoS Architecture . . . . . . . . . 18
3.6.2. New Queuing Disciplines . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.7. Congestion Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.8. Studying the Evolution of the Internet Infrastructure. . 20
3.9. Middleboxes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.10. Internet Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.11. Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.12. Meeting the Needs of the Future. . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.13. Freely Distributable Prototypes. . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4. Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6. Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
7. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
8. Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
9. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1. Introduction
This document discusses the history of funding for Internet research,
expresses concern about the current state of such funding, and
outlines several specific areas that the IAB believes merit
additional research. Current funding levels for Internet research
are not generally adequate, and several important research areas are
significantly underfunded. This situation needs to be rectified for
the Internet to continue its evolution and development.
1.1. Document Organization
The first part of the document is a high-level discussion of the
history of funding for Internet research to provide some historical
context to this document. The early funding of Internet research was
largely from the U.S. government, followed by a period in the second
half of the 1990s of commercial funding and of funding from several
governments. However, the commercial funding for Internet research
has been reduced due to the recent economic downturn.
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The second part of the document provides an incomplete set of open
Internet research topics. These are only examples, intended to
illustrate the breadth of open research topics. This second section
supports the general thesis that ongoing research is needed to
further the evolution of the Internet infrastructure. This includes
research on the medium-time-scale evolution of the Internet
infrastructure as well as research on longer-time-scale grand
challenges. This also includes many research issues that are already
being actively investigated in the Internet research community.
Areas that are discussed in this section include the following:
naming, routing, security, network management, and transport. Issues
that require more research also include more general architectural
issues such as layering and communication between layers. In
addition, general topics discussed in this section include modeling,
measurement, simulation, test-beds, etc. We are focusing on topics
that are related to the IETF and IRTF (Internet Research Task Force)
agendas. (For example, Grid issues are not discussed in this
document because they are addressed through the Global Grid Forum and
other Grid-specific organizations, not in the IETF.)
Where possible, the examples in this document point to separate
documents on these issues, and only give a high-level summary of the
issues raised in those documents.
1.2. IAB Concerns
In the aftermath of September 11 2001, there seems to be a renewed
interest by governments in funding research for Internet-related
security issues. From [Jackson02]: "It is generally agreed that the
security and reliability of the basic protocols underlying the
Internet have not received enough attention because no one has a
proprietary interest in them".
That quote brings out a key issue in funding for Internet research,
which is that because no single organization (e.g., no single
government, software company, equipment vendor, or network operator)
has a sense of ownership of the global Internet infrastructure,
research on the general issues of the Internet infrastructure are
often not adequately funded. In our current challenging economic
climate, it is not surprising that commercial funding sources are
more likely to fund that research that leads to a direct competitive
advantage.
The principal thesis of this document is that if commercial funding
is the main source of funding for future Internet research, the
future of the Internet infrastructure could be in trouble. In
addition to issues about which projects are funded, the funding
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source can also affect the content of the research, for example,
towards or against the development of open standards, or taking
varying degrees of care about the effect of the developed protocols
on the other traffic on the Internet.
At the same time, many significant research contributions in
networking have come from commercial funding. However, for most of
the topics in this document, relying solely on commercially-funded
research would not be adequate. Much of today's commercial funding
is focused on technology transition, taking results from non-
commercial research and putting them into shipping commercial
products. We have not tried to delve into each of the research
issues below to discuss, for each issue, what are the potentials and
limitations of commercial funding for research in that area.
On a more practical note, if there was no commercial funding for
Internet research, then few research projects would be taken to
completion with implementations, deployment, and follow-up
evaluation.
While it is theoretically possible for there to be too much funding
for Internet research, that is far from the current problem. There
is also much that could be done within the network research community
to make Internet research more focused and productive, but that would
belong in a separate document.
1.3. Contributions to this Document
A number of people have directly contributed text for this document,
even though, following current conventions, the official RFC author
list includes only the key editors of the document. The
Acknowledgements section at the end of the document thanks other
people who contributed to this document in some form.
2. History of Internet Research and Research Funding
2.1. Prior to 1980
Most of the early research into packet-switched networks was
sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) [CSTB99]. This includes the initial design, implementation,
and deployment of the ARPAnet connecting several universities and
other DARPA contractors. The ARPAnet originally came online in the
late 1960s. It grew in size during the 1970s, still chiefly with
DARPA funding, and demonstrated the utility of packet-switched
networking.
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DARPA funding for Internet design started in 1973, just four years
after the initial ARPAnet deployment. The support for Internet
design was one result of prior DARPA funding for packet radio and
packet satellite research. The existence of multiple networks
(ARPAnet, packet radio, and packet satellite) drove the need for
internetworking research. The Internet arose in large measure as a
consequence of DARPA research funding for these three networks -- and
arise only incidentally from the commercially-funded work at Xerox
PARC on Ethernet.
2.2. 1980s and early 1990s
The ARPAnet converted to the Internet Protocol (IP) on January 1,
1983, approximately 20 years before this document was written.
Throughout the 1980s, the U.S. Government continued strong research
and development funding for Internet technology. DARPA continued to
be the key funding source, but was supplemented by other DoD (U.S.
Department of Defense) funding (e.g., via the Defense Data Network
(DDN) program of the Defense Communication Agency (DCA)) and other
U.S. Government funding (e.g., U.S. Department of Energy (DoE)
funding for research networks at DoE national laboratories, (U.S.)
National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for academic institutions).
This funding included basic research, applied research (including
freely distributable prototypes), the purchase of IP-capable
products, and operating support for the IP-based government networks
such as ARPAnet, ESnet, MILnet, the NASA Science Internet, and
NSFnet.
During the 1980s, the U.S. DoD desired to leave the business of
providing operational network services to academic institutions, so
funding for most academic activities moved over to the NSF during the
decade. NSF's initial work included sponsorship of CSnet in 1981.
By 1986, NSF was also sponsoring various research projects into
networking (e.g., Mills' work on Fuzzballs). In the late 1980s, NSF
created the NSFnet backbone and sponsored the creation of several NSF
regional networks (e.g., SURAnet) and interconnections with several
international research networks. NSF also funded gigabit networking
research, through the Corporation for National Research Initiatives
(CNRI), starting in the late 1980s. It is important to note that the
NSF sponsorship was focused on achieving core NSF goals, such as
connecting scientists at leading universities to NSF supercomputing
centers. The needs of high-performance remote access to
supercomputers drove the overall NSFnet performance. As a side
effect, this meant that students and faculty at those universities
enjoyed a relatively high-performance Internet environment. As those
students graduated, they drove both commercial use of the Internet
and the nascent residential market. It is no accident that this was
the environment from which the world wide web emerged.
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Most research funding outside the U.S. during the 1980s and early
1990s was focused on the ISO OSI networking project or on then-new
forms of network media (e.g., wireless, broadband access). The
European Union was a significant source of research funding for the
networking community in Europe during this period. Some of the best
early work in gigabit networking was undertaken in the UK and Sweden.
2.3. Mid-1990s to 2003
Starting in the middle 1990s, U.S. Government funding for Internet
research and development was significantly reduced. The premise for
this was that the growing Internet industry would pay for whatever
research and development that was needed. Some funding for Internet
research and development has continued in this period from European
and Asian organizations (e.g., the WIDE Project in Japan [WIDE]).
Reseaux IP Europeens [RIPE] is an example of market-funded networking
research in Europe during this period.
Experience during this period has been that commercial firms have
often focused on donating equipment to academic institutions and
promoting somewhat vocationally-focused educational projects. Many
of the commercially-funded research and development projects appear
to have been selected because they appeared likely to give the
funding source a specific short-term economic advantage over its
competitors. Higher risk, more innovative research proposals
generally have not been funded by industry. A common view in Silicon
Valley has been that established commercial firms are not very good
at transitioning cutting edge research into products, but were
instead good at buying small startup firms who had successfully
transitioned such cutting edge research into products.
Unfortunately, small startup companies are generally unable
financially to fund any research themselves.
2.4. Current Status
The result of reduced U.S. Government funding and profit-focused,
low-risk, short-term industry funding has been a decline in higher-
risk but more innovative research activities. Industry has also been
less interested in research to evolve the overall Internet
architecture, because such work does not translate into a competitive
advantage for the firm funding such work.
The IAB believes that it would be helpful for governments and other
non-commercial sponsors to increase their funding of both basic
research and applied research relating to the Internet, and to
sustain these funding levels going forward.
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3. Open Internet Research Topics
This section primarily discusses some specific topics that the IAB
believes merit additional research. Research, of course, includes
not just devising a theory, algorithm, or mechanism to accomplish a
goal, but also evaluating the general efficacy of the approach and
then the benefits vs. the costs of deploying that algorithm or
mechanism. Important cautionary notes about this discussion are
given in the next sub-section. This particular set of topics is not
intended to be comprehensive, but instead is intended to demonstrate
the breadth of open Internet research questions.
Other discussions of problems of the Internet that merit further
research include the following:
[CIPB02,Claffy03a,Floyd,NSF03a,NSF03b].
3.1. Scope and Limitations
This document is NOT intended as a guide for public funding agencies
as to exactly which projects or proposals should or should not be
funded.
In particular, this document is NOT intended to be a comprehensive
list of *all* of the research questions that are important to further
the evolution of the Internet; that would be a daunting task, and
would presuppose a wider and more intensive effort than we have
undertaken in this document.
Similarly, this document is not intended to list the research
questions that are judged to be only of peripheral importance, or to
survey the current (global; governmental, commercial, and academic)
avenues for funding for Internet research, or to make specific
recommendations about which areas need additional funding. The
purpose of the document is to persuade the reader that ongoing
research is needed towards the continued evolution of the Internet
infrastructure; the purpose is not to make binding pronouncements
about which specific areas are and are not worthy of future funding.
For some research clearly relevant to the future evolution of the
Internet, there are grand controversies between competing proposals
or competing schools of thought; it is not the purpose of this
document to take positions in these controversies, or to take
positions on the nature of the solutions for areas needing further
research.
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That all carefully noted, the remainder of this section discusses a
broad set of research areas, noting a subset of particular topics of
interest in each of those research areas. Again, this list is NOT
comprehensive, but rather is intended to suggest that a broad range
of ongoing research is needed, and to propose some candidate topics.
3.1.1. Terminology
Several places in this document refer to 'network operators'. By
that term, we intend to include anyone or any organization that
operates an IP-based network; we are not using that term in the
narrow meaning of commercial network service providers.
3.2. Naming
The Internet currently has several different namespaces, including IP
addresses, sockets (specified by the IP address, upper-layer
protocol, and upper-layer port number), Autonomous System (AS)
number, and the Fully-Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). Many of the
Internet's namespaces are supported by the widely deployed Domain
Name System [RFC-3467] or by various Internet applications [RFC-2407,
Section 4.6.2.1]
3.2.1. Domain Name System (DNS)
The DNS system, while it works well given its current constraints,
has several stress points.
The current DNS system relies on UDP for transport, rather than SCTP
or TCP. Given the very large number of clients using a typical DNS
server, it is desirable to minimize the state on the DNS server side
of the connection. UDP does this well, so it is a reasonable choice,
though this has other implications, for example a reliance on UDP
fragmentation. With IPv6, intermediate fragmentation is not allowed
and Path MTU Discovery is mandated. However, the amount of state
required to deploy Path MTU Discovery for IPv6 on a DNS server might
be a significant practical problem.
One implication of this is that research into alternative transport
protocols, designed more for DNS-like applications where there are
very many clients using each server, might be useful. Of particular
interest would be transport protocols with little burden for the DNS
server, even if that increased the burden somewhat for the DNS
client.
Additional study of DNS caching, both currently available caching
techniques and also of potential new caching techniques, might be
helpful in finding ways to reduce the offered load for a typical DNS
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server. In particular, examination of DNS caching through typical
commercial firewalls might be interesting if it lead to alternative
firewall implementations that were less of an obstacle to DNS
caching.
The community lacks a widely-agreed-upon set of metrics for measuring
DNS server performance. It would be helpful if people would
seriously consider what characteristics of the DNS system should be
measured.
Some in the community would advocate replacing the current DNS system
with something better. Past attempts to devise a better approach
have not yielded results that persuaded the community to change.
Proposed work in this area could be very useful, but might require
careful scrutiny to avoid falling into historic design pitfalls.
With regards to DNS security, major technical concerns include
finding practical methods for signing very large DNS zones (e.g., and
tools to make it easier to manage secure DNS infrastructure.
Most users are unable to distinguish a DNS-related failure from a
more general network failure. Hence, maintaining the integrity and
availability of the Domain Name System is very important for the
future health of the Internet.
3.2.2. New Namespaces
Additionally, the Namespace Research Group (NSRG) of the Internet
Research Task Force (IRTF) studied adding one or more additional
namespaces to the Internet Architecture [LD2002]. Many members of
the IRTF NSRG believe that there would be significant architectural
benefit to adding one or more additional namespaces to the Internet
Architecture. Because smooth consensus on that question or on the
properties of a new namespace was not obtained, the IRTF NSRG did not
make a formal recommendation to the IETF community regarding
namespaces. The IAB believes that this is an open research question
worth examining further.
Finally, we believe that future research into the evolution of
Internet-based distributed computing might well benefit from studying
adding additional namespaces as part of a new approach to distributed
computing.
3.3. Routing
The currently deployed unicast routing system works reasonably well
for most users. However, the current unicast routing architecture is
suboptimal in several areas, including the following: end-to-end
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convergence times in global-scale catenets (a system of networks
interconnected via gateways); the ability of the existing inter-
domain path-vector algorithm to scale well beyond 200K prefixes; the
ability of both intra-domain and inter-domain routing to use multiple
metrics and multiple kinds of metrics concurrently; and the ability
of IPv4 and IPv6 to support widespread site multi-homing without
undue adverse impact on the inter-domain routing system. Integrating
policy into routing is also a general concern, both for intra-domain
and inter-domain routing. In many cases, routing policy is directly
tied to economic issues for the network operators, so applied
research into routing ideally would consider economic considerations
as well as technical considerations.
This is an issue for which the commercial interest is clear, but that
seems unlikely to be solved through commercial funding for research,
in the absence of a consortium of some type.
3.3.1. Inter-domain Routing
The current operational inter-domain routing system has between
150,000 and 200,000 routing prefixes in the default-free zone (DFZ)
[RFC-3221]. ASIC technology obviates concerns about the ability to
forward packets at very high speeds. ASIC technology also obviates
concerns about the time required to perform longest-prefix-match
computations. However, some senior members of the Internet routing
community have concerns that the end-to-end convergence properties of
the global Internet might hit fundamental algorithmic limitations
(i.e., not hardware limitations) when the DFZ is somewhere between
200,000 and 300,000 prefixes. Research into whether this concern is
well-founded in scientific terms seems very timely.
Separately from the above concern, recent work has shown that there
can be significant BGP convergence issues today. At present, it
appears that the currently observed convergence issues relate to how
BGP has been configured by network operators, rather than being any
sort of fundamental algorithmic limitation [MGVK02]. This
convergence time issue makes the duration of the apparent network
outage much longer than it should be. Additional applied research
into which aspects of a BGP configuration have the strongest impact
on convergence times would help mitigate the currently observed
operational issues.
Also, inter-domain routing currently requires significant human
engineering of specific inter-AS paths to ensure that reasonably
optimal paths are used by actual traffic. Ideally, the inter-domain
routing system would automatically cause reasonably optimal paths to
be chosen. Recent work indicates that improved BGP policy mechanisms
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might help ensure that reasonably optimal paths are normally used for
inter-domain IP traffic. [SMA03] Continued applied research in this
area might lead to substantially better technical approaches.
The current approach to site multi-homing has the highly undesirable
side-effect of significantly increasing the growth rate of prefix
entries in the DFZ (by impairing the deployment of prefix
aggregation). Research is needed into new routing architectures that
can support large-scale site multi-homing without the undesirable
impacts on inter-domain routing of the current multi-homing
technique.
The original application for BGP was in inter-domain routing,
primarily within service provider networks but also with some use by
multi-homed sites. However, some are now trying to use BGP in other
contexts, for example highly mobile environments, where it is less
obviously well suited. Research into inter-domain routing and/or
intra-domain policy routing might lead to other approaches for any
emerging environments where the current BGP approach is not the
optimal one.
3.3.2. Routing Integrity
Recently there has been increased awareness of the longstanding issue
of deploying strong authentication into the Internet inter-domain
routing system. Currently deployed mechanisms (e.g., BGP TCP MD5
[RFC-2385], OSPF MD5, RIP MD5 [RFC-2082]) provide cryptographic
authentication of routing protocol messages, but no authentication of
the actual routing data. Recent proposals (e.g., S-BGP [KLMS2000])
for improving this in inter-domain routing appear difficult to deploy
across the Internet, in part because of their reliance on a single
trust hierarchy (e.g., a single PKI). Similar proposals (e.g., OSPF
with Digital Signatures, [RFC-2154]) for intra-domain routing are
argued to be computationally infeasible to deploy in a large network.
A recurring challenge with any form of inter-domain routing
authentication is that there is no single completely accurate source
of truth about which organizations have the authority to advertise
which address blocks. Alternative approaches to authentication of
data in the routing system need to be developed. In particular, the
ability to perform partial authentication of routing data would
facilitate incremental deployment of routing authentication
mechanisms. Also, the ability to use non-hierarchical trust models
(e.g., the web of trust used in the PGP application) might facilitate
incremental deployment and might resolve existing concerns about
centralized administration of the routing system, hence it merits
additional study and consideration.
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3.3.3. Routing Algorithms
The current Internet routing system relies primarily on two
algorithms. Link-state routing uses the Dijkstra algorithm
[Dijkstra59]. Distance-Vector routing (e.g., RIP) and Path-Vector
routing (e.g., BGP) use the Bellman-Ford algorithm [Bellman1957,
FF1962]. Additional ongoing basic research into graph theory as
applied to routing is worthwhile and might yield algorithms that
would enable a new routing architecture or otherwise provide
improvements to the routing system.
Currently deployed multicast routing relies on the Deering RPF
algorithm [Deering1988]. Ongoing research into alternative multicast
routing algorithms and protocols might help alleviate current
concerns with the scalability of multicast routing.
The deployed Internet routing system assumes that the shortest path
is always the best path. This is provably false, however it is a
reasonable compromise given the routing protocols currently
available. The Internet lacks deployable approaches for policy-based
routing or routing with alternative metrics (i.e., some metric other
than the number of hops to the destination). Examples of alternative
policies include: the path with lowest monetary cost; the path with
the lowest probability of packet loss; the path with minimized
jitter; and the path with minimized latency. Policy metrics also
need to take business relationships into account. Historic work on
QoS-based routing has tended to be unsuccessful in part because it
did not adequately consider economic and commercial considerations of
the routing system and in part because of inadequate consideration of
security implications.
Transitioning from the current inter-domain routing system to any new
inter-domain routing system is unlikely to be a trivial exercise. So
any proposal for a new routing system needs to carefully consider and
document deployment strategies, transition mechanisms, and other
operational considerations. Because of the cross-domain
interoperability aspect of inter-domain routing, smooth transitions
from one inter-domain routing system are likely to be difficult to
accomplish. Separately, the inter-domain routing system lacks strong
market forces that would encourage migration to better technical
approaches. Hence, it appears unlikely that the commercial sector
will be the source of a significantly improved inter-domain routing
system.
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3.3.4. Mobile and Ad-Hoc Routing
While some of the earliest DARPA-sponsored networking research
involved packet radio networks, mobile routing [IM1993] and mobile
ad-hoc routing [RFC-2501] are relatively recent arrivals in the
Internet, and are not yet widely deployed. The current approaches
are not the last word in either of those arenas. We believe that
additional research into routing support for mobile hosts and mobile
networks is needed. Additional research for ad-hoc mobile hosts and
mobile networks is also worthwhile. Ideally, mobile routing and
mobile ad-hoc routing capabilities should be native inherent
capabilities of the Internet routing architecture. This probably
will require a significant evolution from the existing Internet
routing architecture. (NB: The term "mobility" as used here is not
limited to mobile telephones, but instead is very broadly defined,
including laptops that people carry, cars/trains/aircraft, and so
forth.)
Included in this topic are a wide variety of issues. The more
distributed and dynamic nature of partially or completely self-
organizing routing systems (including the associated end nodes)
creates unique security challenges (especially relating to
Authorization, Authentication, and Accounting, and relating to key
management). Scalability of wireless networks can be difficult to
measure or to achieve. Enforced hierarchy is one approach, but can
be very limiting. Alternative, less constraining approaches to
wireless scalability are desired. Because wireless link-layer
protocols usually have some knowledge of current link characteristics
such as link quality, sublayer congestion conditions, or transient
channel behavior, it is desirable to find ways to let network-layer
routing use such data. This raises architectural questions of what
the proper layering should be, which functions should be in which
layer, and also practical considerations of how and when such
information sharing should occur in real implementations.
3.4. Security
The Internet has a reputation for not having sufficient security. In
fact, the Internet has a number of security mechanisms standardized,
some of which are widely deployed. However, there are a number of
open research questions relating to Internet security. In
particular, security mechanisms need to be incrementally deployable
and easy to use. "[Security] technology must be easy to use, or it
will not be configured correctly. If mis-configured, security will
be lost, but things will `work'" [Schiller03].
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3.4.1. Formal Methods
There is an ongoing need for funding of basic research relating to
Internet security, including funding of formal methods research that
relates to security algorithms, protocols, and systems.
For example, it would be beneficial to have more formal study of
non-hierarchical trust models (e.g., PGP's Web-of-Trust model). Use
of a hierarchical trust model can create significant limitations in
how one might approach securing components of the Internet, for
example the inter-domain routing system. So research to develop new
trust models suited for the Internet or on the applicability of
existing non-hierarchical trust models to existing Internet problems
would be worthwhile.
While there has been some work on the application of formal methods
to cryptographic algorithms and cryptographic protocols, existing
techniques for formal evaluation of algorithms and protocols lack
sufficient automation. This lack of automation means that many
protocols aren't formally evaluated in a timely manner. This is
problematic for the Internet because formal evaluation has often
uncovered serious anomalies in cryptographic protocols. The creation
of automated tools for applying formal methods to cryptographic
algorithms and/or protocols would be very helpful.
3.4.2. Key Management
A recurring challenge to the Internet community is how to design,
implement, and deploy key management appropriate to the myriad of
security contexts existing in the global Internet. Most current work
in unicast key management has focused on hierarchical trust models,
because much of the existing work has been driven by corporate or
military "top-down" operating models.
The paucity of key management methods applicable to non-hierarchical
trust models (see above) is a significant constraint on the
approaches that might be taken to secure components of the Internet.
Research focused on removing those constraints by developing
practical key management methods applicable to non-hierarchical trust
models would be very helpful.
Topics worthy of additional research include key management
techniques, such as non-hierarchical key management architectures
(e.g., to support non-hierarchical trust models; see above), that are
useful by ad-hoc groups in mobile networks and/or distributed
computing.
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Although some progress has been made in recent years, scalable
multicast key management is far from being a solved problem.
Existing approaches to scalable multicast key management add
significant constraints on the problem scope in order to come up with
a deployable technical solution. Having a more general approach to
scalable multicast key management (i.e., one having broader
applicability and fewer constraints) would enhance the Internet's
capabilities.
In many cases, attribute negotiation is an important capability of a
key management protocol. Experience with the Internet Key Exchange
(IKE) to date has been that it is unduly complex. Much of IKE's
complexity derives from its very general attribute negotiation
capabilities. A new key management approach that supported
significant attribute negotiation without creating challenging levels
of deployment and operations complexity would be helpful.
3.4.3. Cryptography
There is an ongoing need to continue the open-world research funding
into both cryptography and cryptanalysis. Most governments focus
their cryptographic research in the military-sector. While this is
understandable, those efforts often have limited (or no) publications
in the open literature. Since the Internet engineering community
must work from the open literature, it is important that open-world
research continues in the future.
3.4.4. Security for Distributed Computing
MIT's Project Athena was an important and broadly successful research
project into distributed computing. Project Athena developed the
Kerberos [RFC-1510] security system, which has significant deployment
today in campus environments. However, inter-realm Kerberos is
neither as widely deployed nor perceived as widely successful as
single-realm Kerberos. The need for scalable inter-domain user
authentication is increasingly acute as ad-hoc computing and mobile
computing become more widely deployed. Thus, work on scalable
mechanisms for mobile, ad-hoc, and non-hierarchical inter-domain
authentication would be very helpful.
3.4.5. Deployment Considerations in Security
Lots of work has been done on theoretically perfect security that is
impossible to deploy. Unfortunately, the S-BGP proposal is an
example of a good research product that has significant unresolved
deployment challenges. It is far from obvious how one could widely
deploy S-BGP without previously deploying a large-scale inter-domain
public-key infrastructure and also centralizing route advertisement
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policy enforcement in the Routing Information Registries or some
similar body. Historically, public-key infrastructures have been
either very difficult or impossible to deploy at large scale.
Security mechanisms that need additional infrastructure have not been
deployed well. We desperately need security that is general, easy to
install, and easy to manage.
3.4.6. Denial of Service Protection
Historically, the Internet community has mostly ignored pure Denial
of Service (DoS) attacks. This was appropriate at one time since
such attacks were rare and are hard to defend against. However, one
of the recent trends in adversarial software (e.g., viruses, worms)
has been the incorporation of features that turn the infected host
into a "zombie". Such zombies can be remotely controlled to mount a
distributed denial of service attack on some victim machine. In many
cases, the authorized operators of systems are not aware that some or
all of their systems have become zombies. It appears that the
presence of non-trivial numbers of zombies in the global Internet is
now endemic, which makes distributed denial of service attacks a much
larger concern. So Internet threat models need to assume the
presence of such zombies in significant numbers. This makes the
design of protocols resilient in the presence of distributed denial
of service attacks very important to the health of the Internet.
Some work has been done on this front [Savage00], [MBFIPS01], but
more is needed.
3.5. Network Management
The Internet had early success in network device monitoring with the
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and its associated
Management Information Base (MIB). There has been comparatively less
success in managing networks, in contrast to the monitoring of
individual devices. Furthermore, there are a number of operator
requirements not well supported by the current Internet management
framework. It is desirable to enhance the current Internet network
management architecture to more fully support operational needs.
Unfortunately, network management research has historically been very
underfunded. Operators have complained that existing solutions are
inadequate. Research is needed to find better solutions.
3.5.1. Managing Networks, Not Devices
At present there are few or no good tools for managing a whole
network instead of isolated devices. For example, the lack of
appropriate network management tools has been cited as one of the
major barriers to the widespread deployment of IP multicast [Diot00,
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SM03]. Current network management protocols, such as the Simple
Network Management Protocol (SNMP), are fine for reading status of
well-defined objects from individual boxes. Managing networks
instead of isolated devices requires the ability to view the network
as a large distributed system. Research is needed on scalable
distributed data aggregation mechanisms, scalable distributed event
correlation mechanisms, and distributed and dependable control
mechanisms.
Applied research into methods of managing sets of networked devices
seems worthwhile. Ideally, such a management approach would support
distributed management, rather than being strictly centralized.
3.5.2. Enhanced Monitoring Capabilities
SNMP does not always scale well to monitoring large numbers of
objects in many devices in different parts of the network. An
alternative approach worth exploring is how to provide scalable and
distributed monitoring, not on individual devices, but instead on
groups of devices and the network-as-a-whole. This requires scalable
techniques for data aggregation and event correlation of network
status data originating from numerous locations in the network.
3.5.3. Customer Network Management
An open issue related to network management is helping users and
others to identify and resolve problems in the network. If a user
can't access a web page, it would be useful if the user could find
out, easily, without having to run ping and traceroute, whether the
problem was that the web server was down, that the network was
partitioned due to a link failure, that there was heavy congestion
along the path, that the DNS name couldn't be resolved, that the
firewall prohibited the access, or that some other specific event
occurred.
3.5.4. Autonomous Network Management
More research is needed to improve the degree of automation achieved
by network management systems and to localize management. Autonomous
network management might involve the application of control theory,
artificial intelligence or expert system technologies to network
management problems.
3.6. Quality of Service
There has been an intensive body of research and development work on
adding QoS to the Internet architecture for more than ten years now
[RFC-1633, RFC-2474, RFC-3260, RFC-2205, RFC-2210], yet we still
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don't have end-to-end QoS in the Internet [RFC-2990, RFC-3387]. The
IETF is good at defining individual QoS mechanisms, but poor at work
on deployable QoS architectures. Thus, while Differentiated Services
(DiffServ) mechanisms have been standardized as per-hop behaviors,
there is still much to be learned about the deployment of that or
other QoS mechanisms for end-to-end QoS. In addition to work on
purely technical issues, this includes close attention to the
economic models and deployment strategies that would enable an
increased deployment of QoS in the network.
In many cases, deployment of QoS mechanisms would significantly
increase operational security risks [RFC-2990], so any new research
on QoS mechanisms or architectures ought to specifically discuss the
potential security issues associated with the new proposal(s) and how
to mitigate those security issues.
In some cases, the demand for QoS mechanisms has been diminished by
the development of more resilient voice/video coding techniques that
are better suited for the best-effort Internet than the older coding
techniques that were originally designed for circuit-switched
networks.
One of the factors that has blunted the demand for QoS has been the
transition of the Internet infrastructure from heavy congestion in
the early 1990s, to overprovisioning in backbones and in many
international links now. Thus, research in QoS mechanisms also has
to include some careful attention to the relative costs and benefits
of QoS in different places in the network. Applied research into QoS
should include explicit consideration of economic issues of deploying
and operating a QoS-enabled IP network [Clark02].
3.6.1. Inter-Domain QoS Architecture
Typically, a router in the deployed inter-domain Internet provides
best-effort forwarding of IP packets, without regard for whether the
source or destination of the packet is a direct customer of the
operator of the router. This property is a significant contributor
to the current scalability of the global Internet and contributes to
the difficulty of deploying inter-domain Quality of Service (QoS)
mechanisms.
Deploying existing Quality-of-Service (QoS) mechanisms, for example
Differentiated Services or Integrated Services, across an inter-
domain boundary creates a significant and easily exploited denial-of-
service vulnerability for any network that provides inter-domain QoS
support. This has caused network operators to refrain from
supporting inter-domain QoS. The Internet would benefit from
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additional research into alternative approaches to QoS, particularly
into approaches that do not create such vulnerabilities and can be
deployed end-to-end [RFC-2990].
Also, current business models are not consistent with inter-domain
QoS, in large part because it is impractical or impossible to
authenticate the identity of the sender of would-be preferred traffic
while still forwarding traffic at line-rate. Absent such an ability,
it is unclear how a network operator could bill or otherwise recover
costs associated with providing that preferred service. So any new
work on inter-domain QoS mechanisms and architectures needs to
carefully consider the economic and security implications of such
proposals.
3.6.2. New Queuing Disciplines
The overall Quality-of-Service for traffic is in part determined by
the scheduling and queue management mechanisms at the routers. While
there are a number of existing mechanisms (e.g., RED) that work well,
it is possible that improved active queuing strategies might be
devised. Mechanisms that lowered the implementation cost in IP
routers might help increase deployment of active queue management,
for example.
3.7. Congestion Control.
TCP's congestion avoidance and control mechanisms, from 1988
[Jacobson88], have been a key factor in maintaining the stability of
the Internet, and are used by the bulk of the Internet's traffic.
However, the congestion control mechanisms of the Internet need to be
expanded and modified to meet a wide range of new requirements, from
new applications such as streaming media and multicast to new
environments such as wireless networks or very high bandwidth paths,
and new requirements for minimizing queueing delay. While there are
significant bodies of work in several of these issues, considerably
more needs to be done.
We would note that research on TCP congestion control is also not yet
"done", with much still to be accomplished in high-speed TCP, or in
adding robust performance over paths with significant reordering,
intermittent connectivity, non-congestive packet loss, and the like.
Several of these issues bring up difficult fundamental questions
about the potential costs and benefits of increased communication
between layers. Would it help transport to receive hints or other
information from routing, from link layers, or from other transport-
level connections? If so, what would be the cost to robust operation
across diverse environments?
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For congestion control mechanisms in routers, active queue management
and Explicit Congestion Notification are generally not yet deployed,
and there are a range of proposals, in various states of maturity, in
this area. At the same time, there is a great deal that we still do
not understand about the interactions of queue management mechanisms
with other factors in the network. Router-based congestion control
mechanisms are also needed for detecting and responding to aggregate
congestion such as in Distributed Denial of Service attacks and flash
crowds.
As more applications have the need to transfer very large files over
high delay-bandwidth-product paths, the stresses on current
congestion control mechanisms raise the question of whether we need
more fine-grained feedback from routers. This includes the challenge
of allowing connections to avoid the delays of slow-start, and to
rapidly make use of newly-available bandwidth. On a more general
level, we don't understand the potential and limitations for best-
effort traffic over high delay-bandwidth-product paths, given the
current feedback from routers, or the range of possibilities for more
explicit feedback from routers.
There is also a need for long-term research in congestion control
that is separate from specific functional requirements like the ones
listed above. We know very little about congestion control dynamics
or traffic dynamics of a large, complex network like the global
Internet, with its heterogeneous and changing traffic mixes, link-
level technologies, network protocols and router mechanisms, patterns
of congestion, pricing models, and the like. Expanding our knowledge
in this area seems likely to require a rich mix of measurement,
analysis, simulations, and experimentation.
3.8. Studying the Evolution of the Internet Infrastructure
The evolution of the Internet infrastructure has been frustratingly
slow and difficult, with long stories about the difficulties in
adding IPv6, QoS, multicast, and other functionality to the Internet.
We need a more scientific understanding of the evolutionary
potentials and evolutionary difficulties of the Internet
infrastructure.
This evolutionary potential is affected not only by the technical
issues of the layered IP architecture, but by other factors as well.
These factors include the changes in the environment over time (e.g.,
the recent overprovisioning of backbones, the deployment of
firewalls), and the role of the standardization process. Economic
and public policy factors are also critical, including the central
fact of the Internet as a decentralized system, with key players
being not only individuals, but also ISPs, companies, and entire
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industries. Deployment issues are also key factors in the evolution
of the Internet, including the continual chicken-and-egg problem of
having enough customers to merit rolling out a service whose utility
depends on the size of the customer base in the first place.
Overlay networks might serve as a transition technology for some new
functionality, with an initial deployment in overlay networks, and
with the new functionality moving later into the core if it seems
warranted.
There are also increased obstacles to the evolution of the Internet
in the form of increased complexity [WD02], unanticipated feature
interactions [Kruse00], interactions between layers [CWWS92],
interventions by middleboxes [RFC-3424], and the like. Because
increasing complexity appears inevitable, research is needed to
understand architectural mechanisms that can accommodate increased
complexity without decreasing robustness of performance in unknown
environments, and without closing off future possibilities for
evolution. More concretely, research is needed on how to evolve the
Internet will still maintaining its core strengths, such as the
current degree of global addressability of hosts, end-to-end
transparency of packet forwarding, and good performance for best-
effort traffic.
3.9. Middleboxes
Research is needed to address the challenges posed by the wide range
of middleboxes [RFC-3234]. This includes issues of security,
control, data integrity, and on the general impact of middleboxes on
the architecture.
In many ways middleboxes are a direct outgrowth of commercial
interests, but there is a need to look beyond the near-term needs for
the technology, to research its broader implications and to explore
ways to improve how middleboxes are integrated into the architecture.
3.10. Internet Measurement
A recurring challenge is measuring the Internet; there have been many
discussions about the need for measurement studies as an integral
part of Internet research [Claffy03]. In this discussion, we define
measurement quite broadly. For example, there are numerous
challenges in measuring performance along any substantial Internet
path, particularly when the path crosses administrative domain
boundaries. There are also challenges in measuring
protocol/application usage on any high-speed Internet link. Many of
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the problems discussed above would benefit from increased frequency
of measurement as well as improved quality of measurement on the
deployed Internet.
A key issue in network measurement is that most commercial Internet
Service Providers consider the particular characteristics of their
production IP network(s) to be trade secrets. Ways need to be found
for cooperative measurement studies, e.g., to allow legitimate non-
commercial researchers to be able to measure relevant network
parameters while also protecting the privacy rights of the measured
ISPs.
Absent measured data, there is possibly an over-reliance on network
simulations in some parts of the Internet research community and
probably insufficient validation that existing network simulation
models are reasonably good representations of the deployed Internet
(or of some plausible future Internet) [FK02].
Without solid measurement of the current Internet behavior, it is
very difficult to know what otherwise unknown operational problems
exist that require attention, and it is equally difficult to fully
understand the impact of changes (past or future) upon the Internet's
actual behavioral characteristics.
3.11. Applications
Research is needed on a wide range of issues related to Internet
applications.
Taking email as one example application, research is needed on
understanding the spam problem, and on investigating tools and
techniques to mitigate the effects of spam, including tools and
techniques that aid the implementation of legal and other non-
technical anti-spam measures [ASRG]. "Spam" is a generic term for a
range of significantly different types of unwanted bulk email, with
many types of senders, content and traffic-generating techniques. As
one part of controlling spam, we need to develop a much better
understanding of its many, different characteristics and their
interactions with each other.
3.12. Meeting the Needs of the Future
As network size, link bandwidth, CPU capacity, and the number of
users all increase, research will be needed to ensure that the
Internet of the future scales to meet these increasing demands. We
have discussed some of these scaling issues in specific sections
above.
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However, for all of the research questions discussed in this
document, the goal of the research must be not only to meet the
challenges already experienced today, but also to meet the challenges
that can be expected to emerge in the future.
3.13. Freely Distributable Prototypes
U.S.'s DARPA has historically funded development of freely
distributable implementations of various Internet technologies (e.g.,
TCP/IPv4, RSVP, IPv6, and IP security) in a variety of operating
systems (e.g., 4.2 BSD, 4.3 BSD, 4.4 BSD, Tenex). Experience has
shown that a good way to speed deployment of a new technology is to
provide an unencumbered, freely-distributable prototype that can be
incorporated into commercial products as well as non-commercial
prototypes. Japan's WIDE Project has also funded some such work,
primarily focused on IPv6 implementation for 4.4 BSD and Linux.
[WIDE] We believe that applied research projects in networking will
have an increased probability of success if the research project
teams make their resulting software implementations freely available
for both commercial and non-commercial uses. Examples of successes
here include the DARPA funding of TCP/IPv4 integration into the 4.x
BSD operating system [MBKQ96], DARPA/USN funding of ESP/AH design and
integration into 4.4 BSD [Atk96], as well as separate DARPA/USN and
WIDE funding of freely distributable IPv6 prototypes [Atk96, WIDE].
4. Conclusions
This document has summarized the history of research funding for the
Internet and highlighted examples of open research questions. The
IAB believes that more research is required to further the evolution
of the Internet infrastructure, and that consistent, sufficient non-
commercial funding is needed to enable such research.
In case there is any confusion, in this document we are not
suggesting any direct or indirect role for the IAB, the IETF, or the
IRTF in handling any funding for Internet research.
5. Acknowledgements
The people who directly contributed to this document in some form
include the following: Ran Atkinson, Guy Almes, Rob Austein, Vint
Cerf, Jon Crowcroft, Sally Floyd, James Kempf, Joe Macker, Craig
Partridge, Vern Paxson, Juergen Schoenwaelder, and Mike St. Johns.
We are also grateful to Kim Claffy, Dave Crocker, Michael Eder, Eric
Fleischman, Andrei Gurtov, Stephen Kent, J.P. Martin-Flatin, and
Hilarie Orman for feedback on earlier drafts of this document.
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We have also drawn from the following reports:
[CIPB02,IST02,NV02,NSF02,NSF03,NSF03a].
6. Security Considerations
This document does not itself create any new security issues for the
Internet community. Security issues within the Internet Architecture
primarily are discussed in Section 3.4 above.
7. Informative References
[ASRG] Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the IRTF. URL
"http://asrg.sp.am/".
[Atk96] R. Atkinson et al., "Implementation of IPv6 in 4.4
BSD", Proceedings of USENIX 1996 Annual Technical
Conference, USENIX Association, Berkeley, CA, USA.
January 1996. URL
http://www.chacs.itd.nrl.navy.mil/publications/CHACS/
1996/1996atkinson-USENIX.pdf
[Bellman1957] R.E. Bellman, "Dynamic Programming", Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1957.
[Claffy03] K. Claffy, "Priorities and Challenges in Internet
Measurement, Simulation, and Analysis", Large Scale
Network meeting, (US) National Science Foundation,
Arlington, VA, USA. 10 June 2003. URL
"http://www.caida.org/outreach/
presentations/2003/lsn20030610/".
[Claffy03a] K. Claffy, "Top Problems of the Internet and What
Sysadmins and Researchers Can Do To Help", plenary talk
at LISA'03, October 2003. URL
"http://www.caida.org/outreach/presentations/
2003/netproblems_lisa03/".
[Clark02] D. D. Clark, "Deploying the Internet - why does it take
so long and, can research help?", Large-Scale
Networking Distinguished Lecture Series, (U.S.)
National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, 8 January
2002. URL: http://www.ngi-
supernet.org/conferences.html
Atkinson & Floyd Informational [Page 24]
RFC 3869 Research Funding Recommendations August 2004
[CSTB99] Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, (U.S.)
National Research Council, "Funding a Revolution:
Government Support for Computing Research", National
Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1999. URL
"http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/
pub_revolution.html".
[CIPB02] Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, "National
Strategy to Secure Cyberspace", The White House,
Washington, DC, USA. September 2002, URL
"http://www.whitehouse.gov/pcipb".
[CWWS92] J. Crowcroft, I. Wakeman, Z. Wang, and D. Sirovica, "Is
Layering Harmful?", IEEE Networks, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp
20-24, January 1992.
[Diot00] C. Diot, et al., "Deployment Issues for the IP
Multicast Service and Architecture", IEEE Network,
January/February 2000.
[Deering1988] S. Deering, "Multicast Routing in Internetworks and
LANs", ACM Computer Communications Review, Volume 18,
Issue 4, August 1988.
[Dijkstra59] E. Dijkstra, "A Note on Two Problems in Connexion with
Graphs", Numerische Mathematik, 1, 1959, pp.269-271.
[FF1962] L. R. Ford Jr. and D.R. Fulkerson, "Flows in Networks",
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1962.
[FK02] S. Floyd and E. Kohler, "Internet Research Needs Better
Models", Proceedings of 1st Workshop on Hot Topics in
Networks (Hotnets-I), Princeton, NJ, USA. October
2002. URL
"http://www.icir.org/models/bettermodels.html".
[IM1993] J. Ioannidis and G. Maguire Jr., "The Design and
Implementation of a Mobile Internetworking
Architecture", Proceedings of the Winter USENIX
Technical Conference, pages 489-500, Berkeley, CA, USA,
January 1993.
[IST02] Research Networking in Europe - Striving for Global
Leadership, Information Society Technologies, 2002.
URL "http://www.cordis.lu/ist/rn/rn-brochure.htm".
Atkinson & Floyd Informational [Page 25]
RFC 3869 Research Funding Recommendations August 2004
[Jacobson88] Van Jacobson, "Congestion Avoidance and Control",
Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 1988 Symposium, ACM SIGCOMM,
Stanford, CA, August 1988. URL
"http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/jacobson88congestion.html".
[Jackson02] William Jackson, "U.S. should fund R&D for secure
Internet protocols, Clarke says", Government Computer
News, 31 October 2002. URL
"http://www.gcn.com/vol1_no1/security/20382-1.html".
[Kruse00] Hans Kruse, "The Pitfalls of Distributed Protocol
Development: Unintentional Interactions between Network
Operations and Applications Protocols", Proceedings of
the 8th International Conference on Telecommunication
Systems Design, Nashville, TN, USA, March 2000. URL
"http://www.csm.ohiou.edu/kruse/publications/
TSYS2000.pdf".
[KLMS2000] S. Kent, C. Lynn, J. Mikkelson, and K. Seo, "Secure
Border Gateway Protocol (S-BGP)", Proceedings of ISOC
Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium,
Internet Society, Reston, VA, February 2000.
[LD2002] E. Lear and R. Droms, "What's in a Name: Thoughts from
the NSRG", expired Internet-Draft, December 2002.
[MBFIPS01] Ratul Mahajan, Steven M. Bellovin, Sally Floyd, John
Ioannidis, Vern Paxson, and Scott Shenker, "Controlling
High Bandwidth Aggregates in the Network", ACM Computer
Communications Review, Vol. 32, No. 3, July 2002. URL
"http://www.icir.org/pushback/".
[MBKQ96] M. McKusick, K. Bostic, M. Karels, and J. Quarterman,
"Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating
System", Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1996.
[MGVK02] Z. Mao, R. Govindan, G. Varghese, & R. Katz, "Route
Flap Dampening Exacerbates Internet Routing
Convergence", Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2002, ACM,
Pittsburgh, PA, USA, August 2002.
[NV02] NetVision 2012 Committee,"DARPA's Ten-Year Strategic
Plan for Networking Research", (U.S.) Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, October 2002. Citation for
acknowledgement purposes only.
Atkinson & Floyd Informational [Page 26]
RFC 3869 Research Funding Recommendations August 2004
[NSF02] NSF Workshop on Network Research Testbeds, National
Science Foundation, Directorate for Computer and
Information Science & Engineering, Advanced Networking
Infrastructure & Research Division, Arlington, VA, USA,
October 2002. URL "http://www-
net.cs.umass.edu/testbed_workshop/".
[NSF03] NSF ANIR Principal Investigator meeting, National
Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, USA. January 9-10,
2003, URL "http://www.ncne.org/training/nsf-
pi/2003/nsfpimain.html".
[NSF03a] D. E. Atkins, et al., "Revolutionizing Science and
Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure", Report of NSF
Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure, January 2003.
URL "http://www.cise.nsf.gov/evnt/reports/
atkins_annc_020303.htm".
[NSF03b] Report of the National Science Foundation Workshop on
Fundamental Research in Networking. April 24-25, 2003.
URL "http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~jorg/workshop1/NSF-
NetWorkshop-2003.pdf".
[Floyd] S. Floyd, "Papers about Research Questions for the
Internet", web page, ICSI Center for Internet Research
(ICIR), Berkeley, CA, 2003 URL
"http://www.icir.org/floyd/research_questions.html".
[RFC-1510] Kohl, J. and C. Neuman, "The Kerberos Network
Authentication Service (V5)", RFC 1510, September 1993.
[RFC-1633] Braden, R., Clark, D., and S. Shenker, "Integrated
Services in the Internet Architecture: an Overview",
RFC 1633, June 1994.
[RFC-2082] Baker, F. and R. Atkinson, "RIP-2 MD5 Authentication",
RFC 2082, January 1997.
[RFC-2210] Wroclawski, J., "The Use of RSVP with IETF Integrated
Services", RFC 2210, September 1997.
[RFC-2154] Murphy, S., Badger, M., and B. Wellington, "OSPF with
Digital Signatures", RFC 2154, June 1997.
[RFC-2385] Heffernan, A., "Protection of BGP Sessions via the TCP
MD5 Signature Option", RFC 2385, August 1998.
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RFC 3869 Research Funding Recommendations August 2004
[RFC-2407] Piper, D., "The Internet IP Security Domain of
Interpretation for ISAKMP", RFC 2407, November 1998.
[RFC-2501] Corson, S. and J. Macker, "Mobile Ad hoc Networking
(MANET): Routing Protocol Performance Issues and
Evaluation Considerations", RFC 2501, January 1999.
[RFC-2990] Huston, G., "Next Steps for the IP QoS Architecture",
RFC 2990, November 2000.
[RFC-3221] Huston, G., "Commentary on Inter-Domain Routing in the
Internet", RFC 3221, December 2001.
[RFC-3234] Carpenter, B. and S. Brim, "Middleboxes: Taxonomy and
Issues", RFC 3234, February 2002.
[RFC-3424] Daigle, L. and IAB, "IAB Considerations for UNilateral
Self-Address Fixing (UNSAF) Across Network Address
Translation", RFC 3424, November 2002.
[RFC-3467] Klensin, J., "Role of the Domain Name System (DNS)",
RFC 3467, February 2003.
[RFC-3535] Schoenwaelder, J., "Overview of the 2002 IAB Network
Management Workshop", RFC 3535, May 2003.
[RFC-3387] Eder, M., Chaskar, H., and S. Nag, "Considerations from
the Service Management Research Group (SMRG) on Quality
of Service (QoS) in the IP Network", RFC 3387,
September 2002.
[RIPE] RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens), Amsterdam, NL. URL
"http://www.ripe.net/ripe/".
[Savage00] Savage, S., Wetherall, D., Karlink, A. R., and
Anderson, T., "Practical Network Support for IP
Traceback", Proceedings of 2000 ACM SIGCOMM Conference,
ACM SIGCOMM, Stockholm, SE, pp. 295-306. August 2000.
[Schiller03] J. I. Schiller, "Interception Technology: The Good, The
Bad, and The Ugly!", Presentation at 28th NANOG
Meeting, North American Network Operators Group
(NANOG), Ann Arbor, MI, USA, June 2003. URL
"http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0306/schiller.html".
Atkinson & Floyd Informational [Page 28]
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[SM03] P. Sharma and R. Malpani, "IP Multicast Operational
Network Management: Design, Challenges, and
Experiences", IEEE Network, Vol. 17, No. 2, March
2003.
[SMA03] N. Spring, R. Mahajan, & T. Anderson, "Quantifying the
Causes of Path Inflation", Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM
2003, ACM, Karlsruhe, Germany, August 2003.
[WD02] Walter Willinger and John Doyle, "Robustness and the
Internet: Design and Evolution", Unpublished/Preprint,
1 March 2002, URL
"http://netlab.caltech.edu/internet/".
[WIDE] WIDE Project, Japan. URL "http://www.wide.ad.jp/".
8. Authors' Addresses
Internet Architecture Board
EMail: iab@iab.org
Internet Architecture Board Members
at the time this document was published were:
Bernard Aboba
Harald Alvestrand (IETF chair)
Rob Austein
Leslie Daigle (IAB chair)
Patrik Faltstrom
Sally Floyd
Mark Handley
Bob Hinden
Geoff Huston (IAB Executive Director)
Jun-ichiro Itojun Hagino
Eric Rescorla
Pete Resnick
Jonathan Rosenberg
We note that Ran Atkinson, one of the editors of the document, was an
IAB member at the time that this document was first created, in
November 2002, and that Vern Paxson, the IRTF chair, is an ex-officio
member of the IAB.
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RFC 3869 Research Funding Recommendations August 2004
Full Copyright Statement
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Atkinson & Floyd Informational [Page 30]
ERRATA
