Thomas Narten wrote:
>
> [...] When someone can make a compelling argument for why
> the bits need to be defined in a certain way (i.e., there is a real
> application for which using the bits provides significant benefits,
> and those benefits do not appear achievable through other means) that
> is the time to define the bits. What I do sense with many of the
> recent discussions surrounding the Flow Label is that there are many
> folks (i.e., folks putting IPv6 into hardware) that want to know what
> they should implement w.r.t. the Flow Label. While it would be nice to
> be able tell them what to do, we shouldn't standardize something just
> for the sake of having a definition.
>
> Thomas
10Gb/sec time wise means 100 psec/bit, or 0.8 nsec per byte, or 3.2
instructions of a hypothetical
1Ghz processor which can execute one instruction per cycle. That's a
hell of a requirement.
As consumers, we all enjoy the very cost-effective availability of
100Mb/sec line speed packet processing in almost every Notebook, or PC.
IP and QoS Engines implemented in silicon, on a chip or a few chips, by
IBM, INTEL, and many, many others, is one of the reasons of the low
costs, along with the ability to optimizing the hardware
in so many more and different ways than the software (for instance
parallel header, or parallel header field processing).
1Gb/sec IPv4 packet forwarding is a reality, 10Gb/sec is just around the
corner, with 40Gb/sec following not long after.
With such drastic "timing" requirements, implementing engines in
silicon, and inventing *clever* mechanisms to handle the sequential
processing of headers alone, will not be sufficient to implement very
cost-effective IPv6 forwarding and QoS solutions, and IPv6 is at a
disadvantage relative to IPv4.
We need all the help we can get from the protocol, that is headers, and
their fields, for forwarding and QoS processing, and by that I mean both
Intserv, and Diffserv.
Regards,
Alex
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