Proposed IETF Working Group: malloc

[Steve Coya <scoya at CNRI.RESTON.VA.US>]

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

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

Multicast-Address Allocation (malloc)
-------------------------------------

 Current Status: Proposed Working Group
 
 Chair(s):
     Steve Hanna <steve.hanna at sun.com>
     David Thaler <dthaler at microsoft.com>
 
 Transport Area Director(s): 
     Scott Bradner  <sob at harvard.edu>
     Vern Paxson  <vern at ee.lbl.gov>
 
 Transport Area Advisor: 
     Vern Paxson  <vern at ee.lbl.gov>
 
 Technical Advisor(s):
     Thomas Narten  <narten at raleigh.ibm.com>
 
 Mailing Lists: 
     General Discussion:malloc at catarina.usc.edu
     To Subscribe:      malloc-request at catarina.usc.edu
     Archive:           ftp://catarina.usc.edu/pub/multicast/malloc/
 
Description of Working Group:
 
Note: This Working Group is co-chartered in the Internet Area.

Multicast address allocation is an essential part of using IP
multicast.  Multicast addresses are an even more limited resource than
unicast addresses, and must be allocated dynamically if they are to
satisfy expected demand.  To this end, the MALLOC WG will define three
protocols which work together to form a global dynamic multicast address 
allocation mechanism.  These protocols will be:
   
  - a "host to Address Allocation Server" protocol used by a host to
    obtain one or more multicast addresses from an address allocation
    server within its domain.
   
  - an intra-domain server to server protocol that address allocation
    servers within the same domain can use to ensure that they do not 
    give out conflicting addresses.
   
  - an inter-domain protocol to provide aggregatable multicast address 
    ranges to domains, which the servers in that domain can then
    allocate individual multicast addresses out of.  This protocol will
    work in conjunction with the IDMR WG's Border Gateway Multicast
    Protocol to provide a scalable inter-domain multicast routing
    solution.

Although mechanisms for enforcing policies for multicast address
allocation may be considered, setting any such policies is not within
the scope of this WG.  Alternative multicast models are also out
of scope.