Re: My impressions of the Sunday meetings....

[Christian Kuhtz <ck@arch.bellsouth.net>]

Hello,

I wasn't able to attend, but I would like to express my opinion as 
well based on what I have seen and reviewed so far.  

I very much agree with the points presented in this email.  I have found
the requirements doc of little usefulness in trying to develop approaches
in how to come up with a solution.  (this isn't intended as a stab against
anyone's pride, just an observation).

It came across in the discussion on this list as if many of these proposals
are good for solving world hunger and cooking coffee in the morning.  Right
now, a glass of cold water is all I really need because right now we have 
nothing, and people are starting to think about getting thirsty someday. ;)

So, coming up with a solution near term that solves a limited set of 
problems to me is preferable to designing the swiss army knife out of
the box.   And I'll take the swiss army knife (which is what BGP-4+ has
sort of mutated into) whenever it is ready.  As long as I can make do
and solve some of the most pressing problems near term and have a rough
plan of getting somewhere else later.

The most pressing problems to me DO NOT include an individual host's
ability to pick and chose a path out of several options.  They DO
include for an administrative domain to be attached to multiple paths
and being able to chose which based on its own administrative or even
just the closer-to-the-DFZ-entity's administrative preferences.

I don't care to solve the 'multi-homed DSL and cable' site problem 
right now.  The more pressing issue is those customers who have 
traditionally been sophisticated and/or large enough to be multipathing
candidates.  Those are what I would like to see developed as a priority,
and until we can tackle one space, I'm sorry.. I don't care about the
proud and few power users who do not generate the lionshare of my
revenue.

If the 'multi-homed DSL and cable' site does get solved by accident or
small amounts of effort, cool.  But I'm not willing to spend a great
deal of energy on that right now.

I also do want to hear radical solutions which question our thinking of 
what we consider accepted facts.  MPLS-VPN is an example of a bastard
child which actually has a practical application and is being deployed
commercially.  Yet, it did rattle quite a few people at its inception.

So, out of the box thinking is good.  Things like.. significance of 
address space over great 'distances' is another one.  Is it neccessary
for things to show up in the DFZ that may rest in layers around it? Is
there a way we can abstraction very complex topology to the DFZ?  Even
if that means perhaps one site not directly attached to the DFZ having
multiple representations in multiple address spaces.


But, before we can do any of that.. let's narrow down this monstrous
scope to a managable piece!

> I think that we need to take a step backward from the various solutions 
> being discussed and try and start at nailing down the problems we are 
> trying to address and what they imply. Without this distance we will 
> get stuck in discussing implementation issues, just as is currently 
> being done on this mailinglist, and not moving forward - mostly because 
> we don't know what problem or part of the problem they address.

I very much agree.

> So, flames, comments and free beer are welcome!

Speak up next time you're in Atlanta. ;)

Thanks,
Christian