RE: Point to Point Ethernet

["Ivan Pepelnjak" <ip () ioshints info>]

We're halfway there (OK, a bit less, they've messed up OSPF) with the
unnumbered VLAN interfaces.

http://wiki.nil.com/Unnumbered_Ethernet_VLAN_interfaces

What's missing is the removal of MAC layer header, but that would require
modifications to the NIC chipsets (= expensive).

Ivan
 
http://www.ioshints.info/about
http://blog.ioshints.info/

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andre Oppermann [mailto:nanog-list () nrg4u com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 12:01 PM
> To: nanog () nanog org
> Subject: Point to Point Ethernet
>
> A few time already I've wished for a fully standardized and 
> vendor interoperable way of doing a true point to point ethernet link.
>
> It would work just like an old leased line or synchronous 
> serial interface and completely do away with ARP, MAC 
> addresses and all that stuff.  Obviously no switches in 
> between would be allowed.
> Each side would run in "promiscuous mode" where every 
> ethernet frame is received and passed up to the network stack 
> (just like on a serial link).  Since MAC addresses are 
> useless they can be scrapped and only the ethertype field 
> remains.  This increases the effective MTU by 12 bytes.
>
> The framing overhead goes away and the packet can directly be 
> directly placed on the wire without taking a detour through 
> L3->L2 lookup and encapsulation step.
>
> More importantly one can specify the just the outgoing 
> interface again instead of the next hop:
>
>   ip route 10.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 g0/1
>
> Do you think this is useful?  Maybe vendors will hear me/us.
>
> --
> Andre