Brian,

> > Where I have N source addresses and M
> > destination addresses, this is easily shown to be
> > O(N*M). 
> 
> Well, not quite, if you have an address selection algorithm
> that excludes some combinations up front. 

        With all due respect, what I said holds. I wasn't talking
        about optimizations, engineering considerations, or other
        constants (which I know you understand is what the 
        notation I used is intended to convey). Its O(N^2), just
        like pairwise anything. 

> Also, do we expect
> N or M to be >3 in many cases, or even >2 in most cases?
> So I think the practical value will be less than you fear,
> typically 4, and >9 would be very rare. Not that this is
> negligible, but it's not unthinkable either.

        Ok, you say > 9 is rare, and maybe that's true, I have no
        clue. Sitting here today if each address represented an
        ISP, then it does seem like greater than some number
        would be rare (I would think 5 or so; who has 5 ISPs
        today?)   

        BTW, can you support your assertion that > 9 is rare in
        any way?.  

        So the problem is this: We say that > 9 is very
        rare. But suppose its not, and you and your correspondent
        both have 10 ISPs, or some combination of your ISPs gives
        you 10 addresses (10 makes for easy arithmetic, and is
        one more than your number [9]). In this case  M=10 and
        N=10, and if you take the typical TCP timeout (3 sec in
        every *nix I have access to), then it takes 
        (10*10*3)/60 = 5 minutes to determine that the host
        isn't reachable. Today a host can do the same thing in
        about 30 seconds. 

        So yes, there are engineering assumptions that can be
        made, but the calculation still holds. That is the
        problem, not the list of all things that could go right.

        Dave

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