[Irtf-rr] Just an idea for a self organiziong IPv6 address space network

[Curtis Villamizar]

In message <NCBBIKACLKNMKDHKKKNFMEGEHGAA.dima@krioukov.net>, "Dmitri Krioukov" 
writes:
> For one of the best attempts to uncover the
> current Internet hierarchy incorporating customer-
> provider relationship please see this:
> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sagarwal/research/BGP-hierarchy/
> 
> However, it doesn't change a bit in calculations
> derived from the fundamental Kleinrock's results.
> And this is essentially reinforced by Curtis's
> considerations below.
> --
> dima.


Dima,

Thanks for the URL.

They did a nice job "quantifying the mess".  A summary can be found on
the slides at
<http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sagarwal/research/BGP-hierarchy/infocom02-present.pdf>
Slide 30 has a nice picture of the top level.  CAIDA has done similar
visualizations.  Skitter plots make nice T-shirts but don't show any
clear hierarchy on which allocation of addresses could be based.

Curtis


> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Curtis Villamizar [mailto:curtis@workhorse.fictitious.org]
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 30, 2002 8:24 PM
> > To: Xiaowei Yang
> > Cc: Dmitri Krioukov; Pepmiller, Craig E.; irtf-rr@puck.nether.net
> > Subject: Re: [Irtf-rr] Just an idea for a self organiziong IPv6 address
> > space network 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > In message <pzvbs5c3oeh.wl@cordelia.lcs.mit.edu>, Xiaowei Yang writes:
> > > 
> > > just out of curiosity, can someone explain what "meshy networks" are?
> > > I understand Internet is no telephone network, and does not have a
> > > strict hierarchy. but the customer-provider relationship defines a
> > > hierarchical relationship, and two provider trees may be connected by
> > > horizontal peering links. so, why is the idea of self organizing
> > > address space so surprising?
> > 
> > 
> > There are at least a dozen providers who would consider themselves to
> > be "tier 1" and at the top of the IPv4 hierarchy.  There are other
> > providers connected to more than one "tier 1" provider.  Many second
> > tier providers and some large enterprises have so far flatly refused
> > to take address space from a higher level provider block, citing the
> > impossible task of renumbering all of the organizations that have
> > recieved numbers from them using current technology.
> > 
> > Historically the top level providers in particular have been known for
> > their reluctance to cooperate in the area of route registry.  They
> > want blocks of addresses and they want any other party to simply trust
> > that whatever routes they announce are valid.  I would expect far more
> > vigorous refusal to accept addresses dynamically and than the
> > reluctance to register routing information.
> > 
> > Providers have always cited a chicken and egg problem in dynamicly
> > learning such things as the IP addresses of routers.  (Routers are
> > needed to reach things and to reach things they need addresses).
> > Routers therefore have always had a configured set of addresses to
> > speed recovery in the event of a massive outage.  Routers don't rely
> > on other services such as DNS for this reason (a resolver is available
> > but cannot be needed to bring up services).
> > 
> > Any algorithm would have a tough time determining which of the few
> > thousand AS where top level vs some lower level.  One could argue that
> > this is a technically solvable problem.  It just may not be
> > politically solvable.
> > 
> > There are issues of security of this whole hierarchy.  ISPs like the
> > fact that if the rest of the Internet completely collapsed their IGP
> > would remain up and running and their direct customers would still be
> > served.  Not even DNS is a vulnerablity for an enterprise using such
> > an ISP and resolving their own domain locally or through the ISP.
> > 
> > By design, the Internet is a collection of more or less autonomous
> > networks glued together.  You are proposing adding a very fundamental
> > dependency on entities higher up in a hierarchy.  There is probably no
> > enterprise of over 100 emplyees willing to dynamically take addresses
> > from their provider such that if they went down (for example, due to
> > power outage) and found themselves up but isolated from their provider
> > they would not have an authoritative source of addresses.  This is
> > even more true for providers not wanting dependencies on others.
> > 
> > Even in a complete mesh, all nodes being equal with no hierarchy at
> > all, you could assert that in theory some sort of spanning tree could
> > assign numbers and in that way "organize the network".  In practice,
> > you don't have any chance of getting the Internet providers to adopt
> > it.  My advice is to direct your efforts elsewhere.
> > 
> > Curtis
> > 
> > 
> > > At Wed, 30 Oct 2002 00:24:22 +0300,
> > > Dmitri Krioukov wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > I perfectly understand Curtis's reply.
> > > > It would be quite surprising to know
> > > > how anything like this could work on
> > > > meshy networks. Some preliminary
> > > > calculations based on fundamental
> > > > Kleinrock's results on hierarchical
> > > > routing are included in:
> > > > http://www.krioukov.net/~dima/pro/lulea/lulea-msrw.ppt
> > > > --
> > > > dima.
> > > > 
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