Subject: Re: [rrg] Fundamental objections to a host-based scalable routingsolution

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:58:32 EST

In einer eMail vom 25.11.2008 01:57:17 Westeuropäische Normalzeit schreibt  
[email-masked]:

wasn't  able to make the IETF so I don't have any insight as to whether
RRG  community is converging or diverging. Regardless, it doesn't
surprise me  that not everybody agrees with any given point -- RRG is too
large a  community for that. However, I resonate with Brian's initial
observation  because if we restrict RRG to routing only, then we also
restrict the  diversity of solutions under consideration and are
therefore converging on  a common solution. 

IMO,we shouldn't restrict the view only towards the scalability and IPv4  
depletion problem but CONCURRENTLY have in mind better routing - both for  inter- 
and intra-domain routing.
Current Multipath  is just ECMP. But there are three classes of next  hops, 
not only router which are a) closer but also which are b) equidistant and  c) 
one hop more remote. The pretty simple TTL is still in place.

On  the one hand, this is self-serving on my part because the solutions
that I  resonate with are routing only. Some may argue that such a
limitation would  eliminate the best alternatives. I have two
counter-arguments to that  claim:
1) I don't discern any strong consensus building upon  approaches
involving host modification so if they are a better approach,  the
majority has yet to become aware of their  superiority.
See above. Routing in the network can be done much smarter and concurrently  
done such that the scaling/depletion problems are solved too. The time for  
smarter routing will have to come sooner or later anyway.
Host-based routing may either be "taking advantage of the IP network layer"  
just like MPLS and Ethernet are utilized. Or: The host nodes become part of  
the network. But is this really wanted ? What are the arguments for doing so ? 

2)  If modifying hosts are out-of-bounds for RRG, then perhaps
middleboxes can  also be deemed out-of-scope as well? If this is the
case, then we are just  that much closer to convergence

My personal belief is that I'd like us to converge soon on  a
routing-only solution. I think that it is time to begin to wrap  the
theoretical discussions up and proceed to modeling and simulation  and
limited deployment experimentation.
How about tolerating alternative solutions concurrently? Particularly in  
case they do not cost neither memory nor  performance time (by avoiding any  
update churn) ?

Failing that, I would like to better understand why the RRG  community
hasn't yet converged on the desirability of map-and-encaps as  a
desirable RRG vector.

I appreciate Tony's answers on this respect.
 
Heiner
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