Aggregation Implies Provider Dependence // Re: [RRG] ALT's strong aggregation often leads to *very* long paths

[Christian Vogt <christian.vogt@nomadiclab.com>]

Robin,

I agree with you that ALT's aggregation of provider-independent (hence
expectedly very scattered) EID space leads to longer-than-optimal paths.
I would like to address another adverse side-effect of aggregation:

ALT-style aggregation IMO violates the design objective of provider
independence.  It binds an edge network owning a piece of provider-
independent EID space to a particular lowest-level router in the ALT
hierarchy.  The edge network thereby gets tied to the "ALT provider"
operating this router, very similar to how edge networks with provider-
allocated address space are nowadays tied to their (physical) provider.

As a result, while address mapping solutions (such as Six/One, APT,
LISP) yield independence from physical providers, ALT introduces a new
dependence on "ALT providers".

- Christian



Robin Whittle wrote:
> Even assuming a global query server (and initial packet delivery) 
> network was desirable, which I think it is not, ALT suffers from the 
> problem that many paths from ITR to ETR will be extremely long - 
> longer than half-way round the Earth.
>
> [...]






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