6. Conclusion

There is a general trend towards support of the OSI protocol suite in the Internet. This direction is being fostered by the Internet Activities Board (IAB) and its Internet Engineering Task Force, and by the Federal Networking Council. By offering an OSI connectionless transport service on top of the Internet, this RFC will allow future applications to use the OSI connectionless upper-layer services, which are required to be conformant to the OSI upper layer architecture. Currently, T-UNIT-DATA, S-UNIT-DATA, P-UNIT-DATA, and A-UNIT-DATA have reached International Standard (IS). As applications based on OSI connectionless services become widely available and OSI lower-layer service is widely implemented in the Internet, the underlying UDP/IP services can be simply replaced with the OSI lower layers.

7. Acknowledgements

Marshall T. Rose of PSI, Inc., provided many valuable comments and corrections.

8. References

[GOSIP88] U.S. Department of Commerce/National Bureau of Standards, [FIPS146] "Government Open Systems Interconnection Profile (GOSIP)", August 1988.

[ISO7498/AD1] ISO, "International Standard 7498 - Information Processing Systems - OSI: Basic Reference Model Addendum 1: Connectionless-mode Transmission", May 1986.

[ISO8072] ISO, "International Standard 8072 - Information Processing Systems - OSI: Transport Service Definition", June 1984.

[ISO8072/AD1] ISO, "International Standard 8072 - Information Processing Systems - OSI: Transport Service Definition Addendum 1: Connectionless-mode Transmission", December 1986.

[ISO8602] ISO, "International Standard 8602 - Information Processing Systems - OSI: Connectionless Transport Protocol Specification", December 1986.

[ISO9548] ISO, "International Standard 9548 - Information Processing Systems - OSI: Connectionless Session Protocol Specification", April 1989.

[ISO9576] ISO, "Draft International Standard 9576 - Information Processing Systems - OSI: Connectionless Presentation Protocol Specification", April 1989.

[ISO10035] ISO, "Draft International Standard 10035 - Information Processing Systems - OSI: Connectionless ACSE Protocol Specification", April 1989.

[ISOSC21/WG6 N184] ISO SC21 WG6, "Justification for Connectionless

Services in the Upper Layers", June 1986.

[RFC768] Postel, J., "User Datagram Protocol", RFC 768, USC/Information Sciences Institute, September 1981.

[RFC791] Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", RFC 791, USC/Information Sciences Institute, September 1981.

[RFC1006] Rose, M., and D. Cass, "ISO Transport Service on top of the TCP - Version 3", RFC 1006, Northrop Research and Technology Center, May 1987.

Security Considerations

Security issues are not discussed in this memo.

Authors' Addresses


Chikong Shue
Open Software Foundation, Inc.
11 Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142

Phone: (617) 621-8972
EMail: chi@osf.org


William Haggerty
Wang Laboratories, Inc.
1 Industrial Ave
Lowell, MA 01851

Phone: (508) 967-3403
EMail: bill@comm.wang.com


Kurt Dobbins
Cabletron, Inc.
35 Industrial Way
Rochester, NH 03867

Phone: (603) 332-9400