On Feb 20, 2008, at 1:54 PM, Bruce M. Simpson wrote:
Wes Peters wrote:
I see a number of people have replied to this message offering
solutions of how to accomplish your migration, using a variety of
tools available to you in FreeBSD. I've always found this
community very supportive in this fashion, and I'm glad they've
jumped in to help you in your transition as well. Please note that
the variety of solutions presented recognize that your transition
period is just that, a temporary situation, and that "multiple
default routes" is not the solution.
The thing is, in a peer-to-peer or ad-hoc mesh network, not having
access to a single next-hop serving as the gateway of last resort
has a much higher probability of occurring than in a fully converged
network with more deterministic layer 3 behaviour.
So we're largely arguing apples vs oranges here. Fact of the matter
is, we can't tell people how to run their networks, or which
protocols to run. People want IP everywhere and they want it now.
(Infinite demand for free goods is another story.)
The argument that functionality "should not" be present because
people "should not" run their networks that way carries no water --
particularly so when issues of wireless presence and ad-hoc networks
blow the old assumptions out of the water.
As much as anything I just object to the semantic dissonance in
"multiple" "default". Think about it.
I still haven't decided what it means at the packet level to have
multiple default routes. Does that mean that, not having found a
"better" route, I send the packets out both routes? Choose between
them? Doesn't that tend to flap packets in a TCP "connection" back
and forth? Does my router have to remember which route it chose for a
TCP connection and reuse that one?
I know people want to be able to plug in a pair of itty bitty routers
and just have their computers be smart enough to use the "best" one,
but it's not clear the implementations they are pushing us towards --
Linux and Windows -- actually accomplish that. In fact, what they
usually do is screw it up badly and the people only THINK they're
getting any enhanced reliability.
You're one of the few people who could convince me that they're doing
better than my experience says, or that we have a way of doing
better. Short of being able to somehow collect information about
whether these links are working, I just don't how it would work. I
can design a daemon that can such thing abusing ICMP, but that is just
a poor man's routing daemon, and still doesn't require multiple
default routes, just one that is semi-intelligently managed.
--
Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?
Wes Peters [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
freebsd-net@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-net
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
