Subject: RE: Draft on Advice for Internet Subnetwork Designers

From: Marie-Jose Montpetit <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 10:31:51 -0800

I don't want to get in a nomenclature argument but by point was that if the
subnetwork provides a transport layer and that transport layer itself has
some queue management then some of the discard can be done ahead of the
router.

Marie-Jose

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Karn [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2000 4:44 PM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Draft on Advice for Internet Subnetwork Designers

>> >On the topic of packet discard especially on those subnet where capacity
>> is
>> >expensive or limited I would add that when possible packets marked form
>> >another subnet should be discarded before transmission on the link.
>> 
>> Is this an issue for the subnetwork designer, or for the router that
>> drives the subnetwork?

>If we start from the premise that the equipment that is connected to the
>subnetwork is unaware of the particularities of the subnetwork, which I
>think is usually the case, then it is an issue for the designer.

I asked the question because I assume by "marked packet" you meant marking
at the IP layer, e.g., with ECN. That implies that it's up to an IP
router to drop the packet if it wishes, since subnetworks know nothing
about IP (or about other subnetworks, for that matter).

Phil

---

From: Cannara <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 23:26:43 -0800

This may be controversial, but I'd like to add that the use of "subnetwork" is
misleading and a better name would help.  Subnetwork could be applied at any
layer, including the application, so it doesn't reflect the meaning of a
perhaps purely physical medium, a tunnelled path, etc.  Since we already
confuse students with "gateway" and "subnet" in the TCP/IP world, I hope we
can get a better term.

Alex

> some queue management then some of the discard can be done ahead of the
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