1547: Requirements for an Internet Standard Point-to-Point Protocol.

This document discusses the evaluation criteria for an Internet Standard Data Link Layer protocol to be used with point-to-point links. Although many industry standard protocols and ad hoc protocols already exist for the data link layer, none are both complete and sufficiently versatile to be accepted as an Internet Standard. In preparation to designing such a protocol, the features necessary to qualify a point-to-point protocol as an Internet Standard are discussed in detail. An analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of several existing protocols on the basis of these requirements demonstrates the failure of each to address key issues.