Mark, In reverse order:
So, what happens if we stop trying to hide the multihoming. Take a server at this multi-homed site and give it two IP addresses, one from each provider's aggregated prefix. Now we modify TCP to use both addresses *simultaneously* - this isn't the same as SCTP, which switches between the two. The client sets up a connection to one address, but in the handshake learns about the other address too. Now it runs two congestion control loops, one with each of the server's IP addresses. Packets are shared between the two addresses by the two congestion control loops - if one congestion-controlled path goes twice as fast as the other, twice as many packets go that way.
You're certainly challenging the orthodox notion that the routing system provides you the best path to get from one point to another. I don't see anything wrong with that. But I also don't see anything wrong with improving the routing system to provide the same function.
This comment goes to the nature of state. I wonder if you believe it would hold true if we could change that nature by creating two buckets, multilateral and bilateral states, and dumping most state in the 2nd bucket? Could we do so and provide optimal routing? What mechanisms would be needed? Would they conflict with the approach you take above?In short, attempts at improving local robustness create global stresses, and potentially global fragility, which is the problem we're all concerned with.
Eliot -- to unsubscribe send a message to rrg-request@psg.com with the word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body. archive: <http://psg.com/lists/rrg/> & ftp://psg.com/pub/lists/rrg