RE: multi-homing fixes

[RJ Atkinson <rja () inet org>]

At 18:23 23/08/01, Roeland Meyer wrote:
> <quote>
> "Half of the companies that are multihomed should have gotten better service
> from their providers," says Patrik Faltstrom, a Cisco engineer and co-chair
> of the IETF's Applications Area. "ISPs haven't done a good enough job
> explaining to their customers that they don't need to multihome."
> </quote>
>
> Is Patrik Faltstrom still an IETF co-chair? Is he still helping the
> [failing] credibility of the IETF? Maybe, that's why? How can any ISP, or
> anyone else, credibly guarantee that they'll still be in business next year?
> Or, that they wont sell out to the very rich bad guys? Or, that circuit
> provisioning will drop to under 5 calendar days?  Because, that is the
> *only* way you will convince business customers that they don't need to
> multi-home.

        Rather than just bash the IETF (which is easy), it might be 
just slightly more productive to wander over, subscribe to the 
relevant list(s), and inject some operational perspective and/or clue.

        Browsing http://www.ietf.org will yield information on current
draft, WG charters, and how to join any lists of interest.


> At $99US for 512MB of PC133 RAM (the point is, RAM is disgustingly cheap and
> getting cheaper), more RAM in the routers is a quick answer. Router clusters
> are another answer, and faster CPUs are yet another. All of the above,
> should get us by until we get a better router architecture. If the IETF is
> being at all effective, that should start now and finish sometime next year,
> so that we can start the 5-year technology roll-out cycle.

        One belief (right or wrong) is the end-to-end path convergence 
algorithm in BGP is close to hitting its scaling limits.  That's 
a problem that infinite RAM could not solve.  A proof that the 
algorithm is not a danger here would be most welcome in many circles.  
If you've got such a proof, please do share.

Ran
rja () inet org