Re: Auto-tunnel Rant

[Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2001 at 12:23:26PM -0500, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
> 
> 
> Bill Nickless wrote:
> > 
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > 
> > At 01:51 AM 3/22/2001 -0500, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
> > >    I think that the promotion of auto-tunnels for the purpose of
> > >furthering multicast deployment is WRONG. It is, IMHO, NOT productive to
> > >expend time and effort in this direction. It diverts resources from the
> > >real goal, which is multicast deployment. If deployed, it will cause
> > >problems that will be inevitably be blamed on multicast.
> > 
> > As I've been playing Multicast Bully, one of the hardest things I've had to
> > do is to get people who think they've got a working multicast deployment to
> > fix it.  (Fix it means MSDP/PIM-SM/MBGP).  These are usually people who
> > have a DVMRP tunnel off to a service provider.  I've also seen situations
> > where an organization has their service provider run a PIM RP.
> > 
> > Adding another set of non-BCP multicast deployment options using these
> > auto-tunneling procedures will inevitably increase the problem space.  I'm
> > already having to ask people why their MSDP SA advertisements are coming
> > from an RP in an unrelated university in another state (probably because of
> > old dense mode connections).
> > 
> > If we need tunnels to get around broken service providers, let's do them
> > explicitly so that we know where they are and can take them out when clues
> > get appropriately spread out.
> 
> Bill;
> 
> Keep up the good work. I appreciate it.
> 
> Just to clear things up, 
> I have nothing against tunnels per se - use, have 'em, will sell you one.
> Its putting a lot of effort into auto-tunnels that I do not regard as a good idea.


	I must also agree.  I like the idea of the tunnels in
theory but in practice I have a lot of concerns in running a network
that supports multicast.  We have native multicast (almost) everywhere
and available to customers.  I do not like the idea of my routers
doing auto tunnels across my customers network to their downstream
customer.  They need to be educated and become more savvy in their
operations.

	I think that instead of putting effort into auto-tunnels that
more time should be spent working on educating the community.  The problem
is that people associate multicast with dvmrp and mbone which is
problematic.  They remember having a 10M dvmrp link and don't understand
that pim sm+msdp+ssm don't have that dramatic bandiwdth downside.

	- Jared

-- 
Jared Mauch  | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net
clue++;      | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/  My statements are only mine.