On Nov 21, 2009, Dan Jen wrote: > Hey Christian, long time no see. Hope you are well. I perused your > proposal and I was wondering if you could elaborate more on how this > achieves the rrg mission of scalability.
Hi Dan - Your question is an important one, and I am sorry to let you wait so long for a response. I expect name-based sockets to mitigate the routing scalability problem by helping reduce the number of edge networks that use provider- independent addresses. Provider-independent addresses are harder to get and more expensive than provider-assigned addresses. Yet many operators desire provider-independent addresses nonetheless because they consider the indirect cost of provider-assigned addresses higher. Name-based sockets reduce this indirect cost of provider-assigned addresses, and hence make the use of provider-assigned addresses in lieu of provider- independent addresses more acceptable. The indirect cost of provider-assigned addresses comprises both, difficulties to multi-home, and tedious and largely manual renumbering upon provider changes. There are three ways in which name-based sockets reduce this indirect cost: (1) They enable fine-granular and responsive multi-homing. (2) They simplify renumbering by offering an easy means to replace IP addresses in referrals with domain names. This helps avoiding updates to application and operating system configurations, scripts, and databases during renumbering. (3) They facilitate low-cost solutions that eliminate renumbering altogether. One such low-cost solution is address translation, which in combination with name-based sockets loses its adverse impact on applications, in particular in IPv6. Certainly, some edge networks will continue to insist on using provider- independent addresses despite name-based sockets, perhaps simply due to inertia. But name-based sockets will help reducing the number of those networks, and hence have a beneficial impact on routing scalability. Does this make sense? - Christian _______________________________________________ rrg mailing list [email protected] http://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/rrg
