Re: automating the network: the big picture...

[Rob Austein <sra@hactrn.net>]

At Tue, 11 Feb 2003 13:52:08 +0100 (CET), Erik Nordmark wrote:
> 
> I think there are some tradeoffs to take into account between e.g. 
> securing a single channel for configuration information (between the client 
> and the DHCP server) with the DHCP server being a single point of failure,
> and securing N channels to N entities providing configuration information
> co-located with the actual service (with fate sharing between the
> configuration entity and the sevice itself).
> I'm sure there are other tradeoffs as well.

- Configuring vs reconfiguring: in the latter case given an adaquate
  caching scheme (and an adaquate implementation, grr), one is probably
  in a better position to keep going if the configuration system
  (whether monolithic or distributed) is on the blink.

- Single config protocol vs multiple config protocol: not the same
  thing as Erik's single point of failure vs co-location tradeoff, one
  could use a single protocol with the co-location model, so that
  one's toaster would only have to implement one config protocol
  (applies both to client toasters and server toasters).  Oh, right,
  this is supposed to be a tradeoff, well, I suppose that having N
  separate protocols to do the same thing is good for the economy :).