[e2e] traffic engineering considered harmful

[grenville armitage]

Manish Karir wrote:
	[..]
> think about it...if you spend millions building
> out your network, would you let somebody else control it??

If one was in a monopoly situation, the answer is obvious.
But perhaps Jon's suggestion makes more sense if you think
of the user selecting on a per-AS basis, rather than literal
hops inside any particular provider's million dollar network.

Start with something simple like an end user architecture that
supports minute by minute choice/re-choice of one's first/last-hop
provider.  The network operator(s) would get to keep control of
*their* networks, but would have to compete to be chosen as
*the* network by educated consumers. Scaling the "informed choice"
aspect of this model is left as an exercise for the reader...
(in the US phone system "informed choice" appears to involve
advertising imploring us to "dial 1800CALLATT" or "1010<blah>"
for some price point or other. There's a lesson in there
somewhere...)

cheers,
gja
____________________________________________________________________
Grenville Armitage                http://members.home.net/garmitage/