Are the Route Servers Viable Solutions That Are Being Held Hostage?

Sun Dec 17 06:14:47 UTC 1995

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>>>>> "Gordon" == Gordon Cook <gcook at tigger.jvnc.net> writes:

    Gordon> Sean, I am trying learn and understand and if
    Gordon> I was unnecessarily harsh on sprint I
    Gordon> apologize. 

Ok, no big deal.  Like everyone else, we have our
share of whoppingly bad mistakes, but it's nicer to
get beaten up for those than for imaginary things.

(Well, actually, it's nicer to get people to repeat all
the wonderful things about us, but then we call such
people PR agents and pay them lots of money :-) )

The NSF's new architecture as I understand it was
principally designed as a way for the NSF to get out of
the business of supplying production networking services
itself by dumping the funded regional networks onto
commercial providers without having to worry that
those networks would end up on multiple providers
who didn't talk to each other.

Parts of the NSF93-52 scheme have worked quite well, other
parts not so well, and other parts have so completely surpassed
all predictions for success as to be somewhat frightening
on engineering and planning fronts.

I imagine that the NSF is already thinking "What Next"
and could well be planning a further devolution of funding
to the level of Universities (or perhaps even to funded
projects).

The problem with the NSF thinking "What Next" is typically
that the Internet moves faster than it does, so by the
time a programme is underway, it is in danger of being
obsolete or wrong-headed.   One could argue that some of
NSF 93-52 is already in one or both of those boats.

Planning for X being experimental and then seeing at the
time the plan is approved that X is about to be rolled
into production and X**2 is being designed for because of
anticipated production need probably gives people ulcers.

On the opposite side of the coin, planning for X, later
needing X, but getting something considerably less than X
gives the Internet ulcers, as we have seen from time to
time with parts of the NSF's new design thingie.

I think both types of flaw should be more easily
correctable than they appear to be right now, but
then sometimes I think the same about telcos...

	Sean.

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