[c-nsp] understanding switching

[Ryan O'Connell]

On 05/06/2005 19:03, Jon Lewis wrote:

>This reminds me of the OSPF interface cost reference bandwidth question I
>asked about somewhat recently.  Is there some reason the defaults for
>these things were so shortsighted?
>
>ospf's auto-cost reference-bandwidth supports a range of 1-4294967 on the
>various platforms I've looked at.  Is there a reason not to default to a
>much larger value, or even the top end of the allowed range?
>  
>

When OSPF was invented, 64k and 2Mb/s circuits were common. 10Mb/s 
Ethernet was regarded as fast and 16Mb/s Token Ring had only just been 
released. Having a higher default wouldn't have allowed enough 
granularity on slow circuts.

Changing the default would need to be done on an organisation-wide level 
- a vendor couldn't just change it between software versions as then 
you'd have routers in your network with different ideas about path 
costs, which could cause all sorts of fun problems.

-- 
         Ryan O'Connell - CCIE #8174
<ryan at complicity.co.uk> - http://www.complicity.co.uk

I'm not losing my mind, no I'm not changing my lines,
I'm just learning new things with the passage of time