[40371] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: MPLS VPNs or not?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wayne E. Bouchard)
Tue Aug 7 23:11:13 2001
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2001 20:10:40 -0700
From: "Wayne E. Bouchard" <web@typo.org>
To: Vadim Antonov <avg@exigengroup.com>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Message-ID: <20010807201040.A40564@typo.org>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10108071848020.29904-100000@arch.exigengroup.com>; from avg@exigengroup.com on Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 07:00:38PM -0700
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 07:00:38PM -0700, Vadim Antonov wrote:
>
> My position was always consistent - if you can do something (like VPN) at
> the edge boxes w/o inroducing complexity into core transport, this is the
> way to do that. "Intelligent networks" is a _bad_ idea.
Not entirely.. Keeping the features and misc. cruft on the edges of
the network is a good thing. However, as the edge becomes more
intelligent, the core has to adapt to service it. This often cannot be
done without adding intelligence into the core. This does not mean
that the core should be a participant of the newest and greatest
feature but should know about the established features in order to
optomize overall function. (eg, multicast.. the core knows about it,
but makes no decisions other than routing and replicating
packets... It does what it is told. All the rest is handled at the
edge and at the RP.)
> Also note that in the backbone world, no operator is protected from
> other's stupid decisions. That's why promoting good practices is a
> necessity, not just a religious argument. Otherwise wily Randy would
> heartily advise everyone else to switch to X.25 running on top of ATM :)
>
> --vadim
These good practices, of course, have to start at the vendors. This is
an area that has been lacking in recent years. (silly defaults, code
that gets pushed into production before its ready because of marketing
schedules, etc.)
-Wayne
