RE: requirements sub-group documents

From: Dmitri Krioukov (dima@krioukov.net)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 14:16:55 EST


> > > 4.5 IP Prefix Aggregation
> > >
> > >This section seems to contradict the earlier section which states
> > >that the system must be scalable. :-)
> >
> > We're just saying that if you can come up with a way to scale
> > without aggregating prefixes, that is just fine...
>
> Ummm.... Yes, well, good luck. A distributed database that
> handles billions of entries and converges in milliseconds to
> support voice, and does not have a constrained interconnection
> model.... Well, maybe with a four deminsional model, where we can
> simply calculate the required routes and transport the results
> back in time through the routing system....
>
> Further, this contradticts with the requirement that routers not
> be infinitely upgraded, in some way, I think.
>
> :-)
>
> Russ

This (central, in my opinion) problem has been discussed
so many times by now. Yes, indeed, we don't know today
how to marry scalability to non-hierarchical routing.
Note, however, that flattening of the Internet topology
is the major reason why the current hierarchical routing
architecture does not scale, why we're doing this work
today, and why both drafts agree that we cannot presuppose
anything about hierarchical nature of the NGA (the Next
Generation Architecture rather than the National Gallery of Art :)
Admit that it would be strange to state that aggregation/
hierarchy is a MUST in the NGA, while the major reason
why we're working on the NGA is that Internet topology
flattening (as a given) contradicts with aggregation/
hierarchy. Since we don't know how to do that today,
I do not see any way other than "significant research
effort."

--
dima.



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