GPRS & Data Services Director

GSM Association Consultant

17 April 2000

To: Mr. Kim Fullbrook

From: John Hoffman

Subject: RIPE Working Party

Public IP Addressing

I want to thank you again for co-ordinating the RIPE Working Party to discuss and agree public IP addressing for GPRS roaming. I have discussed this matter with various members of the GSM Association staff and Executive Committee. All are in agreement that this work is vital to the implementation of GPRS global roaming.

As you are aware, IP addressing can be broken down into two categories, public and private. Your work will only address the public addressing required for GPRS roaming as outlined in IR-33, IR-34 and IR-35 documentation. As agreed in IR-33 and ratified by Plenary, public IP addresses for various GPRS nodes (SGSN, GGSN, DNS, etc.) must be applied for by GPRS operators. Your sole task is to discuss and agree this issue.

It must be made clear to everyone participating that private addressing of GPRS networks and/or terminal devices is outside the scope of your work. These decisions are left to GPRS operators to decide how best to develop a private addressing plan in keeping with the various GPRS specifications. It is also important to note that the future addressing needs of various UMTS issues is also outside the scope of your work as the GSM Association will be participating in various forums to discuss the public addressing requirements of 3G networks and terminal devices.

With these thoughts in mind, I want to wish you much success in your objective to secure agreement of how GPRS operators will secure public IP addresses for their GPRS network nodes.

Best regards,

John Hoffman

Copy: Chair IREG

Chair IREG GPRSWP

Neil Lilly