RFC 890 (rfc890) - Page 2 of 3
Exterior Gateway Protocol implementation schedule
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RFC 890 February 1984 EGP Implementation Schedule The factoring of the old set of smart gateways into a number of autonomous systems allows more flexibility for the development and testing of improved routing procedures. Different autonomous systems can adopt different routing procedures internally, as long as they communicate with other autonomous systems via the EGP. The Transition Situation The first step in the transition from the current situation to the future situation is the replacement of all dumb gateways with gateways that implement at least a subset of the EGP. This subset is called the "Stub Exterior Gateway Protocol", and is described in RFC-888 [1]. The second step is to factor the existing smart gateways into autonomous systems. The gateways programmed and maintained by different groups will become distinct autonomous systems. As things are, this will result in one fairly large autonomous system and three or four small autonomous systems. At this step the large autonomous system will be referred to as the "core" autonomous system. All other autonomous systems will be stubs attached to this core via EGP. The third step is to specify the full EGP protocol, and to allow a rich connectivity between co-equal autonomous systems. Policy Statement After 1-Aug-84 there shall be no dumb gateways in the Internet. Every gateway must be a member of some autonomous system. Some gateway of each autonomous system must exchange routing information with some gateway of the core autonomous system using the Exterior Gateway Protocol. Implication If you have a dumb gateway now, you should start doing something today to get it upgraded to, or replaced by, an EGP gateway. Help Available There may be a gateway you can use already developed by someone. People at the following places are working on EGP gateways: BBN, MIT, Linkabit, ISI, Honeywell, and Symbolics. For more information send a message to Joyce Reynolds at mailbox "JKReynolds@USC-ISIF". There are plans to provide EGP functionality in Berkeley 4.2 Unix. Postel
