Tim Osburn wrote:
Using a tunneling protocols that are also available on current routers & built into Linux/FreeBSD distros would certainly facilitate making tunnel termination easier. For example on our Cisco routers were I would foreseeably terminate tunnels wehave the following: (GRE being by far the most popular & easiest)
thrt06(config-if)#tunnel mode ? aurp AURP TunnelTalk AppleTalk encapsulation cayman Cayman TunnelTalk AppleTalk encapsulation dvmrp DVMRP multicast tunnel eon EON compatible CLNS tunnel gre generic route encapsulation protocol ipip IP over IP encapsulation ipsec IPSec tunnel encapsulation iptalk Apple IPTalk encapsulation ipv6 Generic packet tunneling in IPv6 ipv6ip IPv6 over IP encapsulation nos IP over IP encapsulation (KA9Q/NOS compatible) rbscp RBSCP in IP tunnel
Tim Osburn www.osburn.com 206.812.6214 W7RSZ
While this seems obvious, note that it is not sufficient to have compatability. As I wrote, Cisco seem to see tunnels as a strictly one-point-to-one-point thing, at least for protocols like ipip. So even though Cisco supports the tunnels that we use now, we cannot reasonably use a Cisco router as an endpoint because it cannot handle the large and always changing list of endpoint addresses.
When we want Cisco compatability, we would use their DMVPN solution, which is a GRE multipoint tunnel combined with the NHRP protocol that manages a meshed tunnel system like we have now. We would only need one or more central systems where the amateur stations connect to, and the protocol automatically registers the public IP address of the stations and handles the setup of the meshed tunnels between all of them. No more need for encap.txt etc.
In my opinion, whatever a small but vocal group is claiming, we need to support tunnels. Not everyone is in the position to announce BGP routes, and many radio amateurs have no intention to become network buffs.
Rob