[10987] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: California NAP Designed as a CIX Killer??
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Hans-Werner Braun)
Thu Mar 17 10:50:41 1994
From: hwb@upeksa.sdsc.edu (Hans-Werner Braun)
To: swb@nr-tech.cit.cornell.edu (Scott W Brim)
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 94 7:49:52 PST
Cc: rcollet@icm1.icp.net (Bob Collet), com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <199403171351.IAA07287@mitchell.cit.cornell.edu>; from "Scott W Brim" at Mar 17, 94 8:50 am
>Bob, the situation Farooq proposed would not be unexpected. It would
>mean more administration, but it's nothing a decent route server
>couldn't handle.
>
>...Scott
>
>At 8:31 3/17/1994 -0500, Bob Collet, Sprint wrote:
> >If Farooq's assertion were to be substantially realized I wonder what that
> >does to the RA.
Yes, Scott is quite right. Also remember, RA stands for Routing
Arbiter. Not Authority, not Administrator. Just like the NAPs, they
are a safety measure to prevent havoc from becoming universal, and
perhaps generally help to making things more sane. And I believe we
have seen enough justification over the years in general, and lately in
particular (including on this list) why for the time being an active
and funded arbitration function would be a good thing. And just like
with the NAPs, if in the end there are better alternatives, more power
to them (including the alternative that it all just works by magic with
no special effort being needed). Having been in the Internet routing
mess at its system level (rather then just local, tactical stuff) for
quite a number of years, and it becoming increasingly more complex
(including as there just is no overall Internet management and everyone
does whatever they please), I believe the RA function is critical.
Internet routing just ain't a spare time activity. For example, it was
difficult enough to design routing and make it work just between the T1
and T3 NSFNET backbones a few years back. And those were quite
homogeneous, including administration and policy wise. Magic will not
prevail if their are many disjoint providers, with additional
complexities like Farooq and others pointed out. I believe the RA will
have alot of work to do, and it won't be fun and games.
Hans-Werner
