2.3.6 IP over InfiniBand (ipoib)

NOTE: This charter is a snapshot of the 56th IETF Meeting in San Francisco, California USA. It may now be out-of-date.

Last Modified: 2003-02-19

Chair(s):
H.K. Jerry Chu <jerry.chu@sun.com>
Bill Strahm <bill@strahm.net>
Internet Area Director(s):
Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>
Erik Nordmark <erik.nordmark@sun.com>
Internet Area Advisor:
Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>
Mailing Lists:
General Discussion: ipoverib@ietf.org
To Subscribe: ipoverib-request@ietf.org
In Body: subscribe ipoverib
Archive: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/ipoverib/current/maill
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 02  Submit Infiniband-Like MIB for IESG Last Call
MAR 02  Submit Channel Adapter MIB for IESG Last Call
NOV 02  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Advanced Encapsulation over Connected Transports
MAR 03  Submit initial Internet-Draft of Sample Counter MIB
Internet-Drafts:
  • - draft-ietf-ipoib-ibif-mib-04.txt
  • - draft-ietf-ipoib-subnet-mgmt-agent-mib-04.txt
  • - draft-ietf-ipoib-ibmib-tc-mib-02.txt
  • - draft-ietf-ipoib-link-multicast-03.txt
  • - draft-ietf-ipoib-ip-over-infiniband-02.txt
  • - draft-ietf-ipoib-dhcp-over-infiniband-05.txt
  • - draft-ietf-ipoib-channel-adapter-mib-04.txt
  • - draft-ietf-ipoib-baseboard-mgmt-agent-mib-00.txt
  • - draft-ietf-ipoib-perf-mgmt-agent-mib-01.txt
  • No Request For Comments

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