Margaret Wasserman writes:
>
> >
> >Jarno answered this one I think, but my point is that *they don't need to
> >know*. They just behave the same way in all cases, and the traffic that
> >doesn't carry fine-grain flow labels will just not get load balanced.
>
> The problem is that the traffic that "doesn't carry fine-grain flow labels"
> will still get sent through the load balancing mechanics, and packets with
> the same flow label will still get forwarded the same way.
Margaret,
Maybe I'm in left field here, but I thought that a
transmitter who didn't mark packets' flow label
was supposed to set it to zero. In that case, the
router could conceivably resort to classifying packets
the old fashioned way -- eg transport headers.
> It would be very bad, though, if the flow label were used, for example,
> to tag packets that contain a TCP SYN, or packets that contain IP options,
> or all HTTP packets, or packets that want a certain class of services, etc.
Er, why would this be bad? Are you thinking of the
possibility of a host gaming a router's fair
queuing by changing the flow label on packet by
packet basis?
Mike
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