[113689] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IXP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com)
Sat Apr 18 12:59:35 2009
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:58:24 +0000
From: bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com
To: Paul Vixie <vixie@isc.org>
In-Reply-To: <1446.1240070501@nsa.vix.com>
Cc: "nanog@merit.edu nanog@merit.edu" <nanog@merit.edu>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 04:01:41PM +0000, Paul Vixie wrote:
> > Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:09:00 +0000
> > From: bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com
> >
> > ... well... while there is a certain childlike obession with the
> > byzantine, rube-goldburg, lots of bells, knobs, whistles type
> > machines... for solid, predictable performance, simple clean
> > machines work best.
>
> like you i long for the days when a DELNI could do this job. nobody
> makes hubs anymore though. but the above text juxtaposes poorly against
> the below text:
i never said i longed for DELNI's (although there is a naive
beauty in such things)
i make the claim that simple, clean design and execution is best.
even the security goofs will agree.
> but either way it's not a DELNI any more. what i see is inevitable
> complexity and various different ways of layering that complexity in. the
> choice of per-peering VLANs represents a minimal response to the problems
> of shared IXP fabrics, with maximal impedance matching to the PNI's that
> inevitably follow successful shared-port peerings.
>
complexity invites failure - failure in unusual and unexpected
ways. small & simple systems are more nimble, faster and more resilient.
complex is usually big, slow, fraught w/ little used code paths, a veritable
nesting ground for virus, worm, half-baked truths, and poorly tested
assumptions.
one very good reason folks move to PNI's is that they are simpler to do.
More cost-effective -AT THAT performance point-.
I worry (to the extent that I worry about such things at all these days)
that the code that drives the Internet these days is bloated, slow, and
generally trying to become the "swiss-army-knife" application of critial
infrastructure joy. witness BGP. more knobs/whistles than you can shake
a stick at. the distinct lack of restraint by code developers in their
desire to add every possible feature is argueably the primary reason the
Internet is so riddled with security vulnerabilities.
I'll get off my soap-box now and let you resume your observations that
complexity as a goal in and of itself is the olny path forward. What
a dismal world-view.
--bill
