scope:

Introduction and Motivation

The concepts of an RPC (defined in RFC 5531 [4]) Network Identifier (netid) and an RPC Universal Address (uaddr) were introduced in RFC 1833 [1] for distinguishing network addresses of multiple protocols and representing those addresses in a canonical form. RFC 1833 states that a netid "is defined by a system administrator based on local conventions, and cannot be depended on to have the same value on every system". (The netid is contained in the field r_netid of the data type rpcb_entry, and the uaddr is contained in the field r_addr of the same data type, where rpcb_entry is defined in RFC 1833.) Since the publication of RFC 1833, it has been found that protocols like Network File System version 4 (NFSv4.0) [5] and RPC/ RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) [6] depend on consistent values of netids and representations of uaddrs. Current practices tend to ensure this consistency. Thus, this document identifies the considerations for IANA to establish registries of netids and uaddr formats for RPC and specifies the initial content of the two registries.