RE: Draft of updated WG charter

[Jay Ford <jay-ford@uiowa.edu>]

On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Ayyasamy, Senthilkumar  (UMKC-Student) wrote:
> > I think address selection & path selection shouldn't be on the end
> > system side of the line, so an architecture which causes every end
> > system in every multi-homed network to do those jobs seems broken
> > to me
>
> you mean the folks who are selling/using the route control products[1]
> (which allows to select the first hop of the best route) are stupids?
> I was of the thought that *provider* selection (or path/address
> selection) should be done by users and not *providers*.

The meaning of "user" & "provider" apparently vary with context.

Here's the structure in my piece of the net:
   host: end system with associated end user(s);
      knowledge of general Internet: almost none
   core routers: routers inside my AS which directly connect to user nets &
      to border routers;
      knowledge of general Internet: subset of whole net, subject to border
      routers
   border routers: routers at boundary of my AS, talking to core routers
      inside & other ASes outside;
      knowledge of general Internet: as much as my BGP peers tell them modulo
      the policy I impose based on what I know about links, providers...

The hosts & associated end users are not up to the job of doing anything
resembling intelligent path selection.  A scheme in which the
source/destination addresses selected by a host dictates a path seems
unlikely to work well.

The core routers know enough to make a good choice among the border routers.

The border routers know the correct next hop for all destinations.

This is a good split of complexity & responsibility, with the hosts not
having to do any of it.

________________________________________________________________________
Jay Ford, Network Engineering Group, Information Technology Services
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242
email: jay-ford@uiowa.edu, phone: 319-335-5555, fax: 319-335-2951