Re: IXP

[Paul Vixie <vixie () isc org>]

> Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:09:00 +0000
> From: bmanning () vacation karoshi com
>
>       ... well...  while there is a certain childlike obession with the
>       byzantine, rube-goldburg, lots of bells, knobs, whistles type
>       machines... for solid, predictable performance, simple clean
>       machines work best.

like you i long for the days when a DELNI could do this job.  nobody
makes hubs anymore though.  but the above text juxtaposes poorly against
the below text:

> Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:35:51 +0100
> From: Nick Hilliard <nick () foobar org>
>
> ... These days, we have switches which do multicast and broadcast storm
> control, unicast flood control, mac address counting, l2 and l3 acls,
> dynamic arp inspection, and they can all be configured to ignore bpdus in
> a variety of imaginative ways. We have arp sponges and broadcast
> monitors. ...

in terms of solid and predictable i would take per-peering VLANs with IP
addresses assigned by the peers themselves, over switches that do unicast
flood control or which are configured to ignore bpdu's in imaginative ways.

but either way it's not a DELNI any more.  what i see is inevitable
complexity and various different ways of layering that complexity in.  the
choice of per-peering VLANs represents a minimal response to the problems
of shared IXP fabrics, with maximal impedance matching to the PNI's that
inevitably follow successful shared-port peerings.