_______________________________________________ In the IPIP tunnels, on both ends, you have a single point of failure since you cannot multihome (as discussed 25 MAR "Can't add redundant AMPR gateway to portal").
N6MEF: Apples and oranges. For my own end-points, I don't have to rely on anyone else if they need attention. The plan that's being discussed would put two additional points of failure between my end points and most other end points and the keeper of those points of failure has no contractual obligation to do anything. If he's away for the summer on vacation or sick or at the movies or out to dinner or ... oh, well.
N6MEF: As for redundant end points, I see nothing in the proposal that fixes that. The proposal merely take one full mesh and breaks it into multiple full meshes, each with the same problem (non-redundant end-points) as before, with the added bonus of two new single points of failure in between.
I know that the network I'm building as well as a few other BGP announced networks are multihomed -- no single point of failure to the internet. In fact, we have planned for one of the BGP announcements and peering to take place at one of our RF point of presences.
N6MEF: Perhaps that's true of the one you're building. I don't see that listed as a requirement in general. And will you have backup sysops? And monitoring? And how will people report problems to you? What happens when you go on vacation or are sick or asleep or on a business trip or ... Today, by the good graces of UCSD, we have a gateway that Brian supports well, when he can. There have been outages, but because of the full-mesh design, they have had ZERO impact on tunnel traffic. So if the volunteer can't work on it right away, only Internet traffic is impacted. And we all have the option to send Internet traffic (NATed) out our own home router. This plan would create intermediaries such that an outage WOULD impact tunnel traffic and we're at the mercy of whoever pushes his way into being that middle man. No thank you.
Another advantage is latency... having traffic travel from Memphis to San Diego and back just to get from my cellphone to a 44net-connected server in the same room is disappointing.
N6MEF: Yes, THAT is a problem worth solving (in addition to allowing alternate endpoint gateways). But we need a solution that doesn't create additional problems. Let's take a step forward, not two steps backward. There is an ENOURMOUS difference between a multi-homed AS, with multiple BGP external gateways (as large corporations would have with multiple sites interconnected by VPN ) and making multiple AS's by inserting BGP gateways in the middle of "internal" (44-to-44) traffic.
Michael N6MEF