Sorry for the top post, but as a crazy thought here, why not throw out
an RA, and if answered, go into transparent bridge mode? Let the
sophisticated users who want routed behavior override it manually.
Jack Bates wrote:
Joe Greco wrote:
Now, the question is, if you're sending all these prefix requests up to
the ISP's router, why is *that* device able to cope with it, and why is
the CPE device *not* able to cope with it?
The CPE cannot cope with it due to lack of a chaining standard and the
lack of customer understanding of configuring a router. An ISP, as
currently designed will manually assign prefix lengths and how they
are handed out at each layer of the network. A home user should not be
expected to understand this level of complexity. A CPE would have to
be told HOW to divide it's variably received prefix to assign it's own
networks and then issue prefixes to other routers behind it.
What is missing, unless I've missed a protocol (which is always
possible), is an automated way for a CPE to assign it's networks, pass
other networks out to downstream routers in an on-need basis. I say
on-need, as there may be 3 routers directly behind the CPE and each of
those may get additional routers and so on and so forth. A presumption
could be made that route efficiency is not necessary at this level.
ie, would it be practical or expected that an automatically configured
network support > 100 routes or whatever a CPE can normally handle?
Of course, if this support is built at a CPE level, there's no reason
the protocol can't be extended and supported at the ISP level as well
for those who wish to utilize it. An ISP, would of course prefer
prefix aggregation and controls to set minimum and maximum aggregate
space for a customer.
You have an ISP network, with a large amount of space available, and a
lesser amount of space dedicated to the POP.
This setup in the ISP network is handled by hopefully clueful
engineers and probably not automatically assigned by some cool
protocol that routers speak (which would be cool, though, even if
impractical).
So what we want is something that can intelligently handle delegation
in an automatic fashion, which probably includes configurable settings
to request/register delegations upstream, and to accept/manage them
downstream. There's no reason that this shouldn't be basic router
capabilities.
For the home router, I believe that this is mandatory if we wish to
continue to allow self configuring networks for home users. A little
extended logic and it can also be useful in larger networks, possibly
even to the point of an enterprise network able to completely number
itself (including renumbering itself as necessary).
Jack
