Lately I find myself wondering if there's not room for a uniform layer 2.5 interface that is designed to work over a set of bridged 802-style layer 2 networks, but presents a slightly different interface to the host. So for instance hosts would be explicitly required to announce presence on a link (no more passive waiting for ARP requests), there would be an explicit L2.5 multicast join/leave (no more sniffing for L3 multicast requests) [...]
(has this already been worked on and I just don't know about it?)
IEEE 802.1 VLANs (Virtual LANs) are intended to provide this type of function in L2 switches... Many people even refer to VLANs as "layer 2.5"...
I think that the idea of Dave Thaler's draft, though (and similar work by others) is to switch at layer 3, so that there is no need for layer 2 switching in this type of environment.
Margaret
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