Re: Traffic engineering tools

["Alex P. Rudnev" <alex () virgin relcom eu net>]

> Stating the obvious, "there's more fiber in the ground than all routers
> can fill up" is not the point.  The point is could we have built the Internet
> to its present point without traffic engineering?  The answer to that is a
> resounding NO!  
May be, you first determine what exactly do you mean as the _traffic
engeneering_? OSPF, btw, is kind of TE too...

/I don't refuse your ideas, through.


> The next question is whether traffic engineering is useful for the future.
> Remember these practitioners do not build networks based upon theory, but on 
> practical implementations that prove themselves to work.  Perhaps the 
> load-sharing mechanism you described for Pluris will work.  Perhaps not.  
> But to promote what hasn't proven itself and dismiss what has sounds 
> suspicously like bad marketing dressed up in the language of mathematics.
>
> Prabhu
>
> Vadim Antonov wrote:
> > > You miss the point.  As you well know, capacity is where it is, and  not
> > > where you need it.  This is a pragmatic and practical problem that costs
> > > people Real Money.
> >
> > Tony, there's more fiber in the ground than all routers together can
> > fill up.  And putting in fiber is not a highly skilled labour, quite
> > unlike getting tons of buggy software to work in a production network.
> >
> > > I know one very large backbone operator who says something like "We couldn't
> > > even begin to build our network without TE.  It works and we must have it."
> >
> > Isn't it the same provider who's notorious for ATM-based network?
> > If we think of the same provider - i had a pleasure of being a customer.
> > Never again.
> >
> > > It's got nothing to do with latency and everything
> > > to do with capacity.  If you have the luxury of having fiber wherever and
> > > whenever you want it, well, you're lucky.  But not everyone is quite so
> > > lucky.
> >
> > Luck is 99% a foresight.
> >
> > > I would claim that those _ARE_ real benefits.
> >
> > Numbers?
> >
> > > Perhaps it's not the elegant, desireable, or theoretically beautiful
> > > solution.  But it is a practical solution.
> >
> > Yes, sure.  As Milo used to say: "With enough thrust even pigs will fly" :)
> >
> > > If you would like to wait for the elegant, desireable, and theoretically
> > > beautiful solution, please be my guest.  Those of us who engineer to reality
> > > have more work to do.  ;-)   I'll simply remind you that there is also a
> > > group of people waiting for the elegant, desireable, and theoretically
> > > beautiful inter-domain routing protocol.
> >
> > I found that one cannot do IDR protocols for a living.  Maybe, Yakov :)
> >
> > > Or.....  it could be a requirement posed by the customer base that vendors
> > > are trying to address.
> >
> > Yeah, sure.  Like the conFusion. Or 7000 series.
> >
> > > You may not share in the problem.  That's fine, I don't think anyone would
> > > (ethically) suggest that you use a tool that solves a problem you don't
> > > have.
> >
> > Unfortunately, the tool does not come free - any new code in a box makes the
> > box flakier.  And costlier.
> >
> > So what all these features do is shifting cost from those who screwed up
> > network planning to those who did it properly, but have to pay for all
> > bundled TE stuff and live with flaky complicated code.
> >
> > My memories of being dragged out of bed nearly every night because of
> > router software being stuck in interesting ways are not particularly fond.
> > I'll exchange complicated ultra-smart hot stuff for a dumb box which
> > actually works - any time.
> >
> > --vadim
>
> -- 
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Aleksei Roudnev, Network Operations Center, Relcom, Moscow
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