IPv6 Technology Gaps in Comparison to the Aeronautical Telecommunications
Network

Wesley M. Eddy
Verizon Federal Network Systems

This presentation begins with a short background on the Aeronautical
Telecommunications Network (ATN), a network protocol architecture developed by
the International Civil Aviation Organization.  ATN is based on elements of the
ISO OSI stack; namely CLNP and a modified version of the ES-IS routing
protocol.  The presentation then, very briefly, gives some highlights of the
IPv6 architecture's development.  A discussion of the relative strengths
and weaknesses of the IPv6 and ATN architectures follows.  For instance, IPv6
supports mobility via a tunneling approach, whereas ATN's mobility support is
via an actual routing protocol.  The tradeoffs between these approaches are
made clear.  Other features of the two architectures are similarly discussed,
including support for policy routing, multihoming, and security.

The conclusion of this presentation identifies the work needed to be done on
IPv6 in order to make it a clearly superior alternative to ATN, and discusses
the relevance of current IETF activities towards this goal.