CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Gary Malkin/Xylogics Minutes of the RIP Version II Working Group (RIPV2) Agenda o Review the protocol analysis Internet-Draft o Review the applicability statement Internet-Draft o Discussion of ``infinity equals 15'' problem o Discussion of next hop field usage o Advancing RIP-2 and demand circuit RIP o Any other issues o Summary of decisions and actions Summary The protocol analysis and applicability statement Internet-Drafts have been accepted as written. Pending a modification to the MIB (discussed below), the set of RIP-2 Internet-Drafts will be submitted for Last Call. Jeffrey Honig reported a problem to the mailing list detailing instances in which a router may discard a valid route with a metric of 15. RFC 1058 specifies that the cost of the interface over which an update was received (usually 1) is added to the metric advertised in the update. If that metric is less than infinity (16), the route is added to the routing table; otherwise, the route is ignored. The problem is that some implementations accept the advertised metric and add the cost of the outgoing interface to the metric, eliminating routes with a calculated metric greater than infinity. The results of the discussion were that this is not a serious enough problem to warrant further specification in the RIP-2 protocol specification. There are two reasons for this determination. First, there have been many sites running with this problem for a very long time and it has not caused any routing problems. At worst, you reduce your network diameter by 1; at best you increase it by one. Second, a network with a diameter of 15 should probably not be running RIP in the first place. The use of the next hop field, as described in the applicability statement, was thoroughly discussed. The objective was to determine that consistent use of the next hop field would not produce routing loops or instabilities. There was some concern over why one would bother to use the field in this way (basically, it is a response to users' requests), but there was no determination that the algorithm was detrimental in any way. The demand circuit RIP RFC is currently a Proposed Standard. It still has some time to wait before moving to Draft Standard, so no action was required at this time. Fred Baker introduced a proposal to add MD5 security to RIP-2 as an extension to the existing password mechanism. It is essentially the same proposal adopted by OSPF. It was decided not to burden RIP-2's advancement in the standards track with the addition of the new security measures, so Fred will be producing an Internet-Draft which will be submitted for consideration as a Proposed Standard. This document will move independently through the standards track. A minor change to the RIP-2 MIB needs to be made to include an MD5 authorization type. This change will be added to the MIB Internet-Draft immediately. Since it is simply an additional value in an existing field, it does not affect the MIB's advancement in the standards track. Progress The RIP-2 protocol and MIB Internet-Drafts were approved for submission as Draft Standards. The protocol analysis and applicability statement Internet-Drafts were also approved to be submitted as Informational RFCs.