Point to Point Ethernet

Wed Jul 8 16:04:10 UTC 2009

> More importantly one can specify the just the outgoing interface
> again instead of the next hop:
> 
>   ip route 10.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 g0/1
> 
> Do you think this is useful?  Maybe vendors will hear me/us.

No.  What makes Ethernet useful and successful is that, unlike most
other network/interconnection technologies, it is cheap and plentiful,
out of necessity.  Any time you have something that is high volume,
demand creates pressure to produce more cheaply, and costs slide as
volumes spike.

There are absolutely "better" choices for point to point circuits,
and there are certainly ways to make a point to point version of 
Ethernet, but doing so invariably seems to involve a lot of reworking
of the underlying mechanisms, which means that you've just invented a
way to make your special-case Ethernet ... expensive.

Anything that can be done exclusively in software, without modifying
the silicon, is probably the only practical way to accomplish this.
However, then you're still leaving more cans of worms to open, because
then there'll be someone who wants to be able to do "something like"
this but have vlan support so they can break out an expensive Foundry
port on inexpensive switches and still do your new point to point
protocol, etc.

... 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.