Converged Networks Threat (Was: Level3 Outage)

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

This is possible today. Build your own routers using
the right microkernel, OSKIT and the Click Modular Router
software and you can have this. When we restrict ourselves
only to router packages from major vendors then we are
doomed to using outdated technology at inflated prices.

Tell you what Michael, build me some of those, have it pass my labs
and I'll give you millions in business. Deal?

The problem with your lab is that you have too many millions
to give. In order to win those millions people would have to prove
that their box is at least as good as C and J in the core of the
largest Internet backbones in the world. That is an awfully big
hurdle and attempting it costs so much money that anyone would
be a fool to try it unless they already had millions in the bank.

History shows that if you can build a mousetrap that is technically
better than anything on the market, your best route for success is
to sell it into niche markets where the customer appreciates the
technical advances that you can provide and is willing to pay for
those technical advances. I don't think that describes the larger
Internet provider networks.

--Michael Dillon

2

So your target market is those mom&pop ISPs that *dont* buy
their Ciscos from eBay? :slight_smile:

3

>> This is possible today. Build your own routers using
>> the right microkernel, OSKIT and the Click Modular Router
>> software and you can have this. When we restrict ourselves
>> only to router packages from major vendors then we are
>> doomed to using outdated technology at inflated prices.

>Tell you what Michael, build me some of those, have it pass my labs
>and I'll give you millions in business. Deal?

The problem with your lab is that you have too many millions
to give. In order to win those millions people would have to prove
that their box is at least as good as C and J in the core of the
largest Internet backbones in the world. That is an awfully big

Let me try this one more time. From the top.

You said:
begin quote
  software and you can have this. When we restrict ourselves
  only to router packages from major vendors then we are
  doomed to using outdated technology at inflated prices.
end quote

So now we have

to give. In order to win those millions people would have to prove
that their box is at least as good as C and J in the core of the

So the outdated technology at inflated prices is too high of a hurdle
to pass for the magic Click Modular Software router, the ones that are
allegedly NOT antiquated and are not using outdated technology?
But somehow still cannot function in a core?

History shows that if you can build a mousetrap that is technically
better than anything on the market, your best route for success is

Thought it went build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a
path to your door, etc etc etc.

to sell it into niche markets where the customer appreciates the
technical advances that you can provide and is willing to pay for
those technical advances. I don't think that describes the larger
Internet provider networks.

How would you know this? Historically, the cutting edge technology
has always gone into the large cores first because they are the
ones pushing the bleeding edge in terms of capacity, power, and
routing.

/vijay

4

I'm not sure that I'd agree with that statement: most
of the large providers with whom I'm familiar tend to
be relatively conservative with regard to new
technology deployments, for a couple of reasons:

1) their backbones currently "work" - changing them
into something which may or may not "work better" is a
non-trivial operation, and risks the network.

2) they have an installed base of customers who are
living with existing functionality - this goes back to
reason 1 - unless there is money to be made, nobody
wants to deploy anything.

3) It makes more sense to deploy a new box at the
edge, and eventually permit it to migrate to the core
after it's been thoroughly proven - the IP model has
features living on the edges of the network, while
capacity lives in the core. If you have 3 high-cap
boxes in the core, it's probably easier to add a
fourth than it is to rip the three out and replace
them with two higher-cap boxes.

4) existing management infrastructure permits the
management of existing boxes - it's easier to deploy
an all-new network than it is to upgrade from one
technology/platform to another.

-David Barak
-Fully RFC 1925 Compliant

5

> How would you know this? Historically, the cutting
> edge technology
> has always gone into the large cores first because
> they are the
> ones pushing the bleeding edge in terms of capacity,
> power, and
> routing.
>
> /vijay

I'm not sure that I'd agree with that statement: most
of the large providers with whom I'm familiar tend to
be relatively conservative with regard to new
technology deployments, for a couple of reasons:

1) their backbones currently "work" - changing them
into something which may or may not "work better" is a
non-trivial operation, and risks the network.

This is perhaps current. Check back to see large deployments
GSR - sprint/UUNEt
GRF - uunet
Juniper - UUNET/CWUSA

In all of the above cases, those were the large isps that forced
development of the boxes. Most of the smaller "cutting edge"
networks are still running 7513s.

GSR was invented because the 7513s were running out of PPS.
CEF was designed to support offloading the RP.

2) they have an installed base of customers who are
living with existing functionality - this goes back to
reason 1 - unless there is money to be made, nobody
wants to deploy anything.

3) It makes more sense to deploy a new box at the
edge, and eventually permit it to migrate to the core
after it's been thoroughly proven - the IP model has
features living on the edges of the network, while
capacity lives in the core. If you have 3 high-cap
boxes in the core, it's probably easier to add a
fourth than it is to rip the three out and replace
them with two higher-cap boxes.

The core has expanded to the edge, not the other way around.
The aggregate backplane bandwidth requirements tend to
drive core box evolution first while the edge box normally
has to deal with high touch features and port multiplexing.
These of course are becoming more and more specialized over
time.

4) existing management infrastructure permits the
management of existing boxes - it's easier to deploy
an all-new network than it is to upgrade from one
technology/platform to another.

Only if you are willing to write off your entire capital
investment. No one is willing to do that today.

-David Barak
-Fully RFC 1925 Compliant

/vijay

6

1) their backbones currently "work" - changing them
into something which may or may not "work better" is a
non-trivial operation, and risks the network.

i would disagree. their backbone tend to reach scaling problems, hence the
need for bleeding/leading edge technologies. that's been my experience in
three past-large networks.

This is perhaps current. Check back to see large deployments
GSR - sprint/UUNEt
GRF - uunet
Juniper - UUNET/CWUSA

indeed, and going back even further

is-is, 7000 and the original SSE - mci/sprint
vip and netflow - genuity (the original)/probably many others

-b

7

vijay gill wrote:

CEF was designed to support offloading the RP.

Not really. There existed distributed fastswitching before DCEF came along. It might still exist. CEF was developed to address the issue of route cache insertion and purging. The unneccessarily painful 60 second interval new destination stall was widely documented before CEF got widespread use. The "fast switching" approach was also particularly painful when DDOS attacks occurred.

Pete

8

Thanks for the correction. I clearly was not paying enough attention
when composing.

/vijay

9

In all of the above cases, those were the large isps
that forced
development of the boxes. Most of the smaller
"cutting edge"
networks are still running 7513s.

Hmm - what I was getting at was that the big ISPs for
the most part still have a whole lot of 7513s running
around (figuratively), while if I were building a new
network from the ground up, I'd be unlikely to use
them.

GSR was invented because the 7513s were running out
of PPS.
CEF was designed to support offloading the RP.

> 2) they have an installed base of customers who
are
> living with existing functionality - this goes
back to
> reason 1 - unless there is money to be made,
nobody
> wants to deploy anything.
>
> 3) It makes more sense to deploy a new box at the
> edge, and eventually permit it to migrate to the
core
> after it's been thoroughly proven - the IP model
has
> features living on the edges of the network, while
> capacity lives in the core. If you have 3
high-cap
> boxes in the core, it's probably easier to add a
> fourth than it is to rip the three out and replace
> them with two higher-cap boxes.

The core has expanded to the edge, not the other way
around.
The aggregate backplane bandwidth requirements tend
to
drive core box evolution first while the edge box
normally
has to deal with high touch features and port
multiplexing.
These of course are becoming more and more
specialized over
time.

I agree, from a capacity perspective: the GSR began
life as a core router because it supported big pipes.
It's only recently that it's had anywhere near the
number of features which the 7500 has (and there are
still a whole lot of specialized features which it
doesn't have). From a feature deployment approach,
new boxes come in at the edge (think of the deployment
of the 7500 itself: it was an IP front-end for ATM
networks)

> 4) existing management infrastructure permits the
> management of existing boxes - it's easier to
deploy
> an all-new network than it is to upgrade from one
> technology/platform to another.

Only if you are willing to write off your entire
capital
investment. No one is willing to do that today.

That is EXACTLY my point: as new companies are
unwilling to write off an investment, they MUST keep
supporting the old stuff. once they're supporting the
old stuff of vendor X, that provides an incentive to
get more new stuff from vendor X, if the management
platform is the same.

For instance, if I've got a Marconi ATM network, I'm
unlikely to buy new Cisco ATM gear, unless I'm either
building a parallel network, or am looking for an edge
front-end to offer new features.
However, if I were building a new ATM network today, I
would do a bake-off between the vendors and see which
one met my needs best.

-David Barak
-Fully RFC 1925 Compliant-

10

History shows that if you can build a mousetrap that is technically
better than anything on the market, your best route for success is
to sell it into niche markets where the customer appreciates the
technical advances that you can provide and is willing to pay for
those technical advances. I don't think that describes the larger
Internet provider networks.

and this has been so well shown by the blazing successes of
bay networks, avici, what-its-name that burst into flames in
everyone's labs, ...

watch out for flying pigs

randy

11

and this has been so well shown by the blazing successes of
bay networks, avici, what-its-name that burst into flames in
everyone's labs, ...

That's a very good point. Building a router that works (at least learning from J's example) is hiring away the most important talent
from your competition. Though, it could also be said that the companies that hired that same talent away from J have not met the same success, yet.

Deepak