I disagree with the fundamental premise of this concept, that it is a PROBLEM that the Internet is not a network. Um, last I looked, the Internet is an interconnection of networks. Not a network in that sense. Edge devices can today, in the scenario you portray, pick the "best" network to connect to. Last thing we need is to ossify a method of doing that. Let the edge be the edge and do what it wants. On Aug 25, 2011, at 9:57 PM, Adam Novak wrote: > I trust that some of you have seen this article from a while back: > > <http://moblog.wiredwings.com/archives/20110315/How-We-Killed-The-Internet-And-Nobody-Noticed.html> > > An informative except: > > "When I open my laptop, I see over ten different wifi access points. > Say I wanted to send data to my friend in the flat next to mine. It is > idiotic that nowadays, I would use the bottleneck subscriber line to > my upstream ISP and my crippled upload speed and push it all the way > across their infrastructure to my neighbors ISP and back to the Wifi > router in reach of mine. The Internet is not meant to be used that > way. Instead, all these wifi networks should be configured to talk to > each other." > > I also trust that you are aware of what happened to the Internet in > Egypt (and elsewhere) this spring, where Internet connectivity was > disrupted by shutting down major ISP networks. > > I would like to bring the attention of the IETF to what I see as a > fundamental problem with the current architecture of the Internet: > > The Internet is not a network. > > As part of the development of the Internet, fault-tolerant routing > protocols have been developed that allow a connecdestined fortion to > be maintained, even if the link that was carrying goes down, by > routing packets around the problem. Similarly, packets can be > load-balanced over multiple links for increased bandwidth. However, > the benefits of these technologies are not available to end users. If > I have a smartphone with both a 3G and a Wi-Fi connection, downloads > cannot currently be load-balanced across them. The two interfaces are > on two different networks, which are almost certainly part of two > different autonomous systems. Packets must be addressed to one of the > two interfaces, not the device, and packets addressed to one interface > have no way to be routed to the other. Similar problems arise when a > laptop has both a wired and a wireless connection. Wired networks also > suffer from related difficulties: If I have Verizon and my friend has > Comcast, and we string an Ethernet cable between our houses, packets > for me will still all come down my connection, and packets for my > friend will still all come down theirs. > > The Internet, as it currently appears to end-users, has a logical tree > topology: computers connect to your home router, which connects to > your ISP, which connects to the rest of the Internet. Cell phones > connect to the tower, which connects through a backhaul link to the > rest of the Internet. Almost all of the devices involved have multiple > physical interfaces and full IP routing implementations, but only the > default route is ever used. This results in a brittle Internet: the > failure of one ISP router can disconnect a large number of end-users > from the Internet, as well as interrupting communication between those > users, even when those users are, physically, only a few feet from > each other. > > My question is this: what IETF work would be needed to add more > routing to the edges of the Internet? If each home or mobile device > was essentially it's own autonomous system, what would this do to > routing table size? To ASN space utilization? How can individuals > interconnect home networks when RIRs do not assign address and AS > number resources to individuals? How might individuals interconnect > home networks without manual routing configuration? Under what > circumstances could an ISP trust a client's claim to have a route to > another client or to another ISP? How might packets sent to a device's > address on one network be routed to that device's address on another > network, while packets to immediately adjacent addresses take the > normal path? > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf