RIP Justification

Wed Sep 29 23:42:09 UTC 2010

Thanks Joe!

You just added a new term to my vocabulary! 

"Technical Correctness"

I think I'm going to go out of my way now to use this in the office... =)

> From: jgreco at ns.sol.net
> Subject: Re: RIP Justification
> To: patrick at ianai.net
> Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:24:59 -0500
> CC: nanog at nanog.org
> 
> > > where the RIP protocol is useful? Please excuse me if this is the =
> > incorrect
> > > forum for such questions.
> > 
> > RIP has one property no "modern" protocol has.  It works on simplex =
> > links (e.g. high-speed satellite downlink with low-speed terrestrial =
> > uplink).
> > 
> > Is that useful?  I don't know, but it is still a fact.
> 
> I once had cause to write a RIP broadcast daemon while on-site with a
> client; they had some specific brokenness with a Novell server and some
> other gear that was "fixed" by a UNIX box, a C compiler, and maybe 20
> or 30 minutes of programming (mostly to remember the grimy specifics of
> UDP broadcast programming).  I do not recall the specific routing issue,
> but being able to just inject a periodic "spoofed" packet was sufficient
> to repair them.
> 
> While not the correct way to engineer a network, sometimes being able to
> bring a client's network back on-line in a crisis is more important than
> technical correctness.  I feel reasonably certain that I would not have
> been able to cobble together a quick solution if they had been relying
> on OSPF, etc.  A simple protocol can be a blessing.  I concede it is more
> often a curse.
> 
> .... JG
> -- 
> Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
> "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
> won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
> With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
> 