North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Internet Backbone Index
On Sun, Jul 13, 1997 at 03:08:00PM -0800, Randy Bush wrote: > There is one significant difference between routed and switched backbones. > The hops on routed backbones can be seen by end users using tools such as > traceroute. On switched backbones, the hops are still there, but can not be > seen by end users. Hence the marketing perception is different though the > results are really the same. Actually, from the IP packet's standpoint, no, the results aren't necessarily the same. It's unlikely, but possible, that a switched mesh backbone could forward some packets that a routed one couldn't, due to TTL issues. Didn't some older kernels set rediculously low TTLs on IP packets? > The router side could turn the argument. "With a routed backbone, you can > actually SEE what is happening to your packets. It is not a hidden unknown, > thus prone to failure you can not diagnose. With routers you know it went > bad at nqu1. With switches, it just went bad." It's a problem I'd accept for this amount of debugging flexibility, though. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth [email protected] Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592
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