The Internet Engineering Task Force has settled on the specification to use as the basis for its next-generation Internet Protocol standard. A new version is required to extend the number of available Internet addresses and it will expand the address size from the current four bytes to 16 bytes. The protocol chosen, SIPP-16, evolved from two other proposals, the Simple Internet Protocol and the P Internet Protocol, which the Internet Engineering Task Force says has been under review for the last two years. Dubbed IPng, it will replace IP v4, with the first production implementations slated for December 1995. To try to alleviate transition problems – the Internet’s bridges, routers and gateways and all the Internet Protocol-based networks that communicate with it will have to be conform to the new standard – the Internet Engineering Task Force has formed two working groups, the NG Transition Working Group and the Transition and Coexistence Including Testing Working Group. They will be responsible for the remaining development work, as well as the Task Force’s implementation strategy. The first tests of IPng implementations are scheduled for later this month, with a draft specification planned for submission as an Internet Engineering Task Force Request for Comment by November. Significant areas still need to be addressed, however. Specifically, it has yet to be decided how to support authentication within Internet Protocol datagrams and how to meet the autoconfiguration requirements that are called for in the spec. However, the most important issue to be addressed is the restructuring of the Domain Name Services to handle the 16-byte addressing structure. It is also currently unknown how IPng will address packet routing and the Task Force has made it clear it wants to minimise the impact on existing routing structures, to make the transition as smooth as possible.
