US patent 5473599

Wed May 7 22:39:57 UTC 2014

On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 5:18 PM, Rob Seastrom <rs at seastrom.com> wrote:
>
> Eygene Ryabinkin <rea+nanog at grid.kiae.ru> writes:
>
>> If you hadn't seen the cases when same VRIDs in the same network were
>> used for both VRRP and CARP doesn't mean that they aren't occurring in
>> the real world.  We use CARP and VRRP quite extensively and when we
>> first were hit by this issue, it was not that funny.
>
> +1
>
>> ...
>> but choosing OUI from the VRRP space (hijacking that space) was
>> clearly the poor design choice.  Fullstop.
>
> +\infty
>
> Either it was an intentional conflict that was meant to cause
> operational problems or it was not.
>
> If it was, then a previous characterization of CARP as a trojan is spot on.
>
> If it was not (and I'm willing to be charitable here), then the
> take-away from this is that the folks who made this decision are
> utterly clueless about standards, the reason for standards, and
> operations.  That would hardly be earth shattering news.

To be slightly less charitable, since I am having hard time
coming up with a third option, I am forced to choose between
maliciousness and incompetence.  And I never thought the
OpenBSD team was incompetent.  Perhaps I was wrong?

But (presuming no adjustments) the patent is now expired,
and the OpenBSD team could now release CARPv2 (or
whatever they decide to call it) which would implement the
standard, should they wish to work and play well with the
standards bodies and community.

Gary