IP over InfiniBand (ipoib)

Last Modified: 2006-04-14

Chair(s):

  • H.K. Jerry Chu <jerry.chu@sun.com>

  • Bill Strahm <bill@strahm.net>

    Internet Area Director(s):

  • Jari Arkko <jari.arkko@piuha.net>
  • Mark Townsley <townsley@cisco.com>

    Internet Area Advisor:

  • Jari Arkko <jari.arkko@piuha.net>

    Mailing Lists:

    General Discussion: ipoverib@ietf.org
    To Subscribe: ipoverib-request@ietf.org
    In Body: subscribe ipoverib
    Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ipoverib/index.html

    Description of Working Group:

    E-mail archive:
    http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/ipoverib/current/mailli
    st.html

    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.

    This working group has two tasks:

    - specify the protocols and encapsulations to transport IPv4/v6 over
      an InfiniBand fabric.

    - specify a set of MIB objects to allow management of the InfiniBand
      fabric itself.

    The initial scope of the WG was limited to the use of the basic IB
    Unreliable Datagram (UD) transport mode for transporting IP over
    Infiniband. With that work mostly done, the scope has been extended to
    develop an optional mechanism for transporting IP over other IB
    transport modes. In particular, there is a desire to transport IP over
    one or both of IB's connected modes, which enable the use of a much
    larger MTU than the IB link MTU size. They also provide improved
    reliability and performance through the use of link level orderly and
    reliable delivery, and IB's automatic path migration (APM) feature.
    However, care must be taken to ensure that use of an IB reliable
    transport does not unduly interfere with the retransmission and
    congestion control mechanisms used by higher layers (e.g., TCP and
    SCTP).

    Other more advanced functionalities such as mapping IP QOS into
    IB-specific capabilities remain out of scope of the WG charter.

    Work items

    1. Specify standards track procedures for transporting IP over
    IB. This includes:

    - supporting ARP/ND packets in order to map IP addresses into IB
      link-layer addresses.

    - define encapsulations for carrying ARP, IPv4 and IPv6
      packets over IB

    - Define  how to transport IP multicast over IB.

    2. Specify a standards track channel adapter MIB that allows
    management of an InfiniBand channel adapter. There will require that
    InfiniBand types be added to the ifType defined by IANA

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

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

    5. Specify an optional, standards track encapsulation for carrying IPv4
    and IPv6 packets over either IB unreliable connections or reliable
    connections.

    Goals and Milestones:

    Done  Submit initial Internet-Draft of ARP encapsulation
    Done  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Requirements/Overview
    Done  Submit initial Internet-Draft of IP V4/V6 Encapsulation
    Done  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Infiniband-Like MIB
    Done  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Channel Adapter MIB
    Done  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Multicast
    Done  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Baseboard MIB
    Done  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Subnet Mangement MIB
    Done  Submit ARP/IP/Multicast encapsulation drafts for IESG Last Call
    Mar 2002  Submit Infiniband-Like MIB for IESG Last Call
    Mar 2002  Submit Channel Adapter MIB for IESG Last Call
    Nov 2002  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Advanced Encapsulation over Connected Transports
    Mar 2003  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Sample Counter MIB

    No Current Internet-Drafts

    Request For Comments:

    Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) over InfiniBand (RFC 4390) (10754 bytes)
    Transmission of IP over InfiniBand (IPoIB) (RFC 4391) (45858 bytes)
    IP over InfiniBand (IPoIB) Architecture (RFC 4392) (53506 bytes)
    IP over InfiniBand: Connected Mode (RFC 4755) (26314 bytes)
    IETF Secretariat - Please send questions, comments, and/or suggestions to ietf-web@ietf.org.

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