Ideal Campus Backbone Router Specification 

                       Networks and Distributed Computing
                         Computing & Communications
                           University of Washington
                              February 15, 1997

     Switching fabric 
          non-blocking, >5 Gbps 

     Interface types 
          100 Mbps full-duplex: 100BASE-TX, 100BASE-FL 
          10/100 (auto-negotiation on speed and duplex) 
          commitment to Gigabit Ethernet in this router 

     Port density 
          4-6 FE ports for BB uplink; 2-3 GE ports ultimately 
          16-30 FE ports for subnet attachment 

     Rack height density 
          <0.25" per FE port 

     Price per port 
          currently <$2k (total router cost/number of FE ports) 
          reasonable correlation with FE switch per-port prices over time 

     Hardware features 
          Flash memory for multiple OS image storage 
          Sufficient NVRAM for multiple configuration storage 
          Hot swappable interface cards 
          Cooling fans should blow to front or rear and have air filters 
          Optional spare power supply 

     Network protocol support 
          IPv4 
          IPv6 implementation either in beta or development well underway 
          Support for legacy/proprietary network protocols is viewed as
             potential product development impediment 

     Unicast routing 
          OSPFv2 
               Robust interoperability with Cisco OSPFv2 
               Equal-cost multipath routing supported for >5 paths 
               Link quality monitoring 
               Secure authentication (e.g., MD5) 
          RIP, RIPv2 
          IRDP (ICMP Router Discovery Protocol) 
          Classless routing 
          Filters for route redistribution 

     Multicast support 
          PIM-Dense Mode for native multicast on backbone 
               Robust interoperability with Cisco PIM-DM 
               Equal-cost multipath routing supported for >2 paths 
          DVMRP for MBONE connectivity via ISP 
          Good PIM-DM<->DVMRP interaction 
          Corporate support for open, interoperable multicast traffic
              containment by switches (IGMPv2/v3?) 
          Commitment to PIM-Sparse Mode development 

     CoS/QoS 
          Initial features should include some prioritization techniques:
               e.g. IP precedence, WFQ,
               RED on a per-queue (prioritization) basis 
               Ability to constrain resources given to high-priority
                 (real-time traffic) queue so as to not freeze out all
                 low-priority traffic. 
          RSVP development well underway 

     Software features 
          Loopback and secondary interface (>10) addresses 
               robust handling by OSPF, IRDP, PIM 
          Command line interface 
          Extensive diagnostic and debugging commands 
          tftp for configuration and OS downloading 
          Network Time Protocol 
          Security (Radius, Kerberos V, tacacs+?) 
          Bootp support and proper forwarding of DHCP packets 
          RMON 
          possibly port-mirroring capability 

     Reliability 
          hardware and software 

     Documentation 
          sophisticated and detailed (available on Web) 
          configuration examples provided 

     Corporate support 
          problem resolution and customer support program 
          rational hardware/software upgrade program 
          commitment to evolving Internet standards (e.g., IPv6) 
          development and implementation commitment for evolving, open
             L2/L3 coordination (e.g, label switching) standards 

     Product focus 

     It would be highly desirable for the product to be proven robust and
     scalable on the Internet backbone, but we would urge that the
     (larger) campus/enterprise backbone network market
     be the primary product development focus. 

corbato@cac.washington.edu 
February 15, 1997 
Rev 6/4//97 teg