From: miw@cc.uq.oz.au (Mark I. Williams)
Subject: Re: Proposal: OSI Addressing on AARnet
Organization: Prentice Centre, University of Queensland
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 02:50:26 GMT

kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) writes:

>In <8376@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> M.Williams@cc.uq.oz.au (Mark I. Williams) writes:

>| In other words, the IETF may well be very nice people, who have our best
>| interests at heart when they don't conflict with their best interests, and
>| it is most certainly in our best interests to track closely what they are
>| doing, but we certainly shouldn't be giving them any more control over our
>| destiny than they already have. 

>I think this is all backwards, I'd much rather have the IETF (which is
>all technical people) making decisions than AUSTEL (which is all
>bureaucrats).  That is, I'd much rather have the decisions made on
>technical grounds than political ones.

Don't fool yourself. The decision will be made on political and
commercial grounds before it is made on technical grounds. CCITT and ISO
are made up of technical people, too.

>| 	My personal intuition is that we are going to have to have two
>| separate NSAP spaces anyway, because while the IETF solution may well use
>| an an ISO 8348 addressing format, the layer 3 protocol will be
>| incompatible with End-System implementations of CLNP.

>I wish I could decipher what that means.

What I am saying is that the IETF may well decide on OSI addressing but
a non-OSI protocol. Then any OSI systems using IETF addressing space
will be stuffed, won't they? 

>| (4) Any non-internet site, when they see an NSAP with the IETF AFI, will
>| simply pass the packets to the nearest Internet router to them.

>There is nothing surprising here - though I think you need to
>be careful on what you define as "internet" here - basically
>the internet is everything connected so that packets can be sent
>directly from one point to another.  At the minute that means
>IP packets - but if IPv7 becomes CLNP, it will mean CLNP packets.
>ie: anywhere you can send CLNP packets will be part of the internet.

I capitalised the word Internet. By this I mean the area in the IETF
addressing domain. I can think of a number of reasons why we don't
necessarily want Europeans thinking Australia is part of the USA. 


>We're not  (beholden to the US for carriage of traffic) now - unless we 
>want to send packets to the US, in which
>case its kind of obvious we have to rely on them.  At the minute we
>also route to other countries via the US, but that's more a matter of
>cost effectiveness than anything else, things could be arranged differently
>if we were willing to pay the costs.  One of the costs is much increased IP
>routing complexity, but that's a problem of current IP and the way routing
>is administred and is one of the things that needs to be fixed in IPv7.

I don't think it is a matter of routing complexity. It is a matter of
routing feasibility. I am sure you have done the sums and seen just how
big the routing protocol packets get if you open up just one alternative
route back to the USA. This basically enforces a network starred on
North America, since international links that can carry the routing
information load would be too expensive. But you're right - it's just a 
matter of cost.

Then again, so is everything.

>I kind of think that anything decided now may turn out to be premature
>long term, I'm not sure we really know what the best way will be yet.
>Like anything else, if you jump in first (by choice or because there's
>no option) you run the risk that what you're doing may be wasted.
>On the other hand you have the advantage that it may not be, and if
>not you'll have a big head start.

At any given time, any decision you care to make is premature in the 
long term. Just deciding to wait for the IETF is a decision in itself,
and the advantage of deciding this way is that we can later blame *our*
mistake on the IETF. (If, of course, it turns out to be a mistake). This
is very good CYA but not necessarily very good Network design.


cheers,
--
Mark Williams         The University of Queensland       miw@cc.uq.edu.au
+61 7 36 54012   (w)  Prentice Centre
+61 7 36 54477  (fax) Qld 4072  Australia
Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit.  -- Seneca