nanog mailing list archives

RE: RIP Justification


From: Brandon Kim <brandon.kim () brandontek com>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 19:42:09 -0400


Thanks Joe!

You just added a new term to my vocabulary! 

"Technical Correctness"

I think I'm going to go out of my way now to use this in the office... =)






From: jgreco () ns sol net
Subject: Re: RIP Justification
To: patrick () ianai net
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:24:59 -0500
CC: nanog () nanog org

where the RIP protocol is useful? Please excuse me if this is the =
incorrect
forum for such questions.

RIP has one property no "modern" protocol has.  It works on simplex =
links (e.g. high-speed satellite downlink with low-speed terrestrial =
uplink).

Is that useful?  I don't know, but it is still a fact.

I once had cause to write a RIP broadcast daemon while on-site with a
client; they had some specific brokenness with a Novell server and some
other gear that was "fixed" by a UNIX box, a C compiler, and maybe 20
or 30 minutes of programming (mostly to remember the grimy specifics of
UDP broadcast programming).  I do not recall the specific routing issue,
but being able to just inject a periodic "spoofed" packet was sufficient
to repair them.

While not the correct way to engineer a network, sometimes being able to
bring a client's network back on-line in a crisis is more important than
technical correctness.  I feel reasonably certain that I would not have
been able to cobble together a quick solution if they had been relying
on OSPF, etc.  A simple protocol can be a blessing.  I concede it is more
often a curse.

.... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.

                                          

Current thread: