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A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn

One-line summary: Description, assumptions, and justification for proposed design features of IP and TCP, given the philosophy that the internetting protocol's goal should be to make connection of heterogeneous networks as easy as possible.

Overview/Main Points

The following IP "core concepts" are introduced in prototype form: (I use "IP" and "TCP" in this summary, but the names hadn't been fixed when this paper was written) Philosophy for an internetting protocol: make it as painless as possible to connect heterogeneous networks. TCP design philosophy: provide a process-to-process (not just host-to-host) communication facility on top of IP.

Relevance

The assumptions and justifications for each design choice mentioned are pretty well spelled out. It should be possible to use this as a "checklist" for design choices in IPv6.

Flaws


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