RFC 1169 (rfc1169) - Page 3 of 15
Explaining the role of GOSIP
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1169 Explaining the Role of GOSIP August 1990 discuss the role of Federal Agencies in this process. 4. Acknowledgements Special thanks are due to Rebecca Nitzan of Sterling and Phill Gross of CNRI for developing several draft versions of this RFC. 5. GOSIP Background The Government OSI Profile (GOSIP), published as Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 146, issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), specifies the details of an OSI configuration for use in the Government so that interoperable OSI products can be procured from commercial vendors. GOSIP is needed because OSI standards allow many potential options and choices, some of which are incompatible. GOSIP is based on refinements of OSI standards. The refinements are agreed to by commercial implementors and potential users through a series of OSI Implementors Workshops (OIW) hosted by NIST four times every year since 1983. As OSI becomes more widely deployed, GOSIP compliance will become increasingly important. GOSIP was written by an inter-agency group and continues to evolve under the guidance of the GOSIP Advanced Requirements Group. The IETF is represented on the GOSIP Advanced Requirements Group, as are Federal Government Agencies, including the FNC agencies. The GOSIP FIPS consists of: 1. An announcement adopting GOSIP as a Federal standard. The announcement section of the FIPS covers topics such as the objectives of GOSIP, its applicability, implementation requirements, and waiver procedures. 2. The technical specification of GOSIP products to be procured. The technical specification section of GOSIP describes the details of a subset of OSI protocols. Products implementing GOSIP are in development by or available from many computer vendors. 3. Appendices describing the plans for including additional functionality into future versions of the GOSIP technical specification. The first version of GOSIP was published in August 1988 following a long comment period beginning as early as January 1987. GOSIP was adopted as FIPS 146 in February 1989 and will become a Federal procurement requirement in August 1990 [1]. A second version of Cerf & Mills
