Re: Auto-tunnel Rant

[Ross Finlayson <finlayson@live.com>]

At 01:23 PM 3/22/01, Jared Mauch wrote:
>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.

If your downstream ISP customers don't support native multicast (even 
though you do), then they will be multi-unicasting across your network in 
any case.  If this multi-unicasting happens to be using a tunneling 
protocol, and you just choose to ignore this, then it will make no 
difference to you.  It'll be basically the same[*] traffic either way.

However, if your downstream customers *are* using an automatic tunneling 
protocol, then you - as an upstream provider - now have the *choice* of 
reducing this traffic by inserting your own tunneling server(s) into the 
stream.  But it's your choice.  If you don't want to worry about this, then 
you don't have to do anything.

>   They need to be educated and become more savvy in their
>operations.

Yes, we all agree that this is the ideal solution.  I wish you continued 
success in educating your downstream ISP customers :-)

         Ross.

[*] This assumes that if your non-native-multicast-enabled downstream 
customers don't have multicast tunneling available, then they will just 
send/receive plain UDP unicast packets instead.  One could argue, however, 
that if they don't have the ability to do multicast tunneling, then they 
will use TCP instead, or just throw up their hands and do nothing.

This, I think, is a better argument to make regarding the possible use of 
automatic multicast tunneling by your downstream customers.  You might 
argue that multicast tunneling would lead to an increase of *UDP* traffic 
across your network, and that this might be something you decide to be 
concerned about.

         Ross.