Re: load-balancing

[Steve Deering <deering@cisco.com>]

At 10:25 AM -0800 2/15/01, Ben Black wrote:
>I'd like to suggest that we use the term traffic engineering rather
>than load balancing.  There are a number of variations on the load
>sharing theme, but in the end it all looks rather like TE.

"Traffic engineering" implies, to me, some explicit steps taken to cause
certain traffic to take certain links or paths, which is itself just one
point on the load-sharing spectrum.  For example, a site may well wish
that its multiple external links be usable at the same time, but not
take any steps to actually influence which traffic takes which link,
relying instead on whatever load sharing naturally arises just based
on the proximity of sources and destinations to one link or another.
So if you're looking for a generic term, I think your words "load
sharing" or "traffic sharing" are better, with "traffic engineering"
and "load balancing" being more specific requirements.

Steve