RE: remember the "diameter of the internet"?

["Martin, Christian" <cmartin () gnilink net>]

> Regarding the diameter of the Internet - I'm still trying to 
> figure out 
> why the hell anyone would want to have "edge" routers (instead of dumb 
> TDMs) if not for inability of IOS to support large numbers of virtual 
> interfaces.  Same story goes for "clusters" of backbone routers.

When ANY router becomes as reliable as a dumb TDM device, then maybe we can
begin collapsing the POP topology.  However, the very nature of the Internet
almost prevents this reliability from being achieved (having a shared
control and data plane seems to be the primary culprit).  There are routers
out there today that can single-handedly replace entire POPs at a fraction
of the rack, power, and operational cost.  Hasn't happened, tho.

I don't like wasting ports for redundant n^2 or log(n^2) interconnect
either, but router and reliability mix like oil and water...

My 2c.

-chris


> --vadim
>
> On 18 Jun 2002, Jeff Harper wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 2002-06-18 at 12:34, brett watson wrote:
> >  
> > > no, just lamenting the passing of an era.  an era where we 
> engineers
> > > cooperated, and "just fixed" the problems as they occured. 
> and we didn't 
> > > do things like this.
> >
> > Keep in mind the reason why the era passed.  During that 
> era, you had 
> > top level, blue sky engineers.  Now the field has been 
> saturated by a 
> > lot of less than desirable "engineers" out there (not 
> calling you one 
> > at
> > all) that ruined it for us all...