Subject: Re: IP network address assignments/allocations information?

From: Sean Doran <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 16:44:14 +0100 (CET)

| given TCP's inability to do congestion-sensitive backoff during
| connection establishment, I'm not so sure that increasing the number
| of concurrent connection attempts is a good idea.

I am pretty sure it is NOT a good idea.

| the selection of the server with the ... lowest [RTT] 
| was often ... good but rarely ... optimal.

One of the things which is becoming apparent to a number
of service providers is that that a low RTT is necessary
but insufficient for "user happiness" - RTT _stability_ is
often more important.

Regrettably, there is little to no way for an end system
to understand the short term stability of a path other than
by trying to move traffic across it.

| no, I can't see how a routing-system-based multihoming
| will scale down to SOHO networks either.

Why not?  It should be an explicit goal of the next cut
at an IPng, and shouldn't just stop at SOHO -- it should
go right to individual homes, _at least_.  I have multiple sets of
wires coming into my flat, and live in a regulatory environment
where each of those wires (and some new ones) is allowed to carry
data/POTS/ISDN/cabletv/you-name-it.

And then there's Sweden, which is several steps ahead.
Check http://www.bredbandsbolaget.se/eng/node103.asp?ID=16
Yes, they really are serious about more than a quarter of a million
homes which will have the moment-to-moment chance to use
any or all of: FTTC/FTTB/FTTH from these folks, cable modems,
or the various offerings from the various telcos (xDSL, dialup)
for Internet connectivity.

The days when only a handful of middle-aged Swedish women have broadband
connections like this: http://www.stupi.se/Bilder/7296-3251-0759/g.html
into their apartments are numbered.  (BTW, if you look closely, you'll
see her apartment's network was multihomed already.)

The assumption that only larger organizations will want multihoming
and at-will-provider-changing is a bad one.

	Sean.

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 10:46:41 -0500

> go right to individual homes, _at least_. 

I have no problems with the *goal*.  I just don't know how to make it 
work without constraining network topology.  

Keith

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 10:46:41 -0500

Keith