Subject: WG Review: IP over InfiniBand (ipoib)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 18:38:18 -0400

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Internet Area.
The IESG has not made any determination as yet. 

The following Description was submitted, and is provided for
informational purposes only:

IP over InfiniBand (ipoib)
--------------------------
 
 Current Status: Proposed Working Group
 
Description of Working Group:
 
InfiniBand is an emerging standard intended as an interconnect for
processor and I/O systems and devices (see the Infiniband Trade
Association web site at http://www.infinibandta.org for details). IP
is one type of traffic (and a very important one) that could use this
interconnect.  InfiniBand would benefit greatly from a standardized
method of handling IP traffic on IB fabrics.  It is also important to
be able to manage InfiniBand devices in a common way.

The work group will specify the procedures and protocols to support
IPv4/v6 over an InfiniBand fabric. Further, they will specify the set
of MIB objects to allow management of the InfiniBand protocol.

The scope of this WG is limited to the definition of an encapsulation
format for carrying IPv4 and IPv6 over IB networks and for performing
address resolution between IP address and IB link-layer addresses. At
the present time, more advanced functionalities such as mapping IP QOS
into IB-specific capabilities is out of scope. Such work items may be
considered in the future, but will require a recharter.

Work items

1. Specify a standards track procedure for supporting ARP/ND packets,
   and resolving IP addresses to IB link addresses.

2. Specify a standards track encapsulation for carrying IPv4 and IPv6
   packets over IB.

3. Determine how to and specify a standard for transfering IP
   multicast over IB.  IB has an optional receiver join multicast
   capability.  Current working group plans are to use IB multicast as
   part of ARP, so using it for IP multicast as well may be a
   reasonable approach.

4. Specify a standards track channel adapter MIB that will allow
   management of an InfiniBand channel adapter.  There will also need
   to be InfiniBand types approved and added to the ifType defined by 
   IANA

5. Specify a standards track baseboard management MIB that will allow
   management of specified device properties

6. Specify sample counter MIBs to allow InfiniBand sample counters to
   be exposed to external SNMP management applications