[44net] Why rip44d?

This is a serious question: Why is everyone so enamored with and focused on using rip44d? Rip44d disadvantages: 1) Rip44d depends on getting the routes from a single source - amprgw, i.e. a single point of failure. 2) If that single source fails (as it did recently, for more than 12 hours), then the routes are gone, even though all of the other gateways may be completely reachable. 3) If you try to avoid that problem by timing out the routes slowly, then you might as well have a static list. It seems to me that periodic downloading of the encaps file, followed by the ip.munge scripts is a far better approach. Advantages: 1) You can define how often you want to download the file, based on how quickly you want to discover new gateways. For me, once nightly is fine. But it could be more often. 2) If the download of encaps fails, I continue using the same routes I had before until the next download attempt. This happens every once in a while - maybe once a month, for whatever reason. But no connectivity is lost. 3) If amprgw fails, the direct tunnels to all other gateways are unaffected. i.e. Single point of failure eliminated. Disadvantages: None that I can see. So I fail to see why everyone is so enamored with rip44d. Please explain. Thanks much, Michael N6MEF