[e2e] traffic engineering considered harmful

[David P. Reed]

At 09:42 PM 6/12/01 +0000, Bob Braden wrote:

>   *>
>   *>    I'll steal this topic as a chance for some blatant self-promotion:
>   *>
>   *>    Resilient Overlay Networks:    http://nms.lcs.mit.edu/ron/
>   *>
>   *>    Take a small collection of hosts around the 'Net.  They
>   *> can see different paths in and out of various ASs.  Have them
>   *> measure the paths between each other, and if they can establish
>   *> a better route by sending their packets indirectly through another
>   *> member of the overlay, do so.
>   *>
>   *>    It's a rough approximation of the ideal that you're alluding to
>   *> in your message, since it has the obvious downsides of needing to
>   *> go all the way to the edge and then back in, and it's limited in its
>   *> view of the available paths, but it's one way to start doing some
>   *> of the things you're looking at.  Works pretty well, too, especially
>   *> in the face of a few egregiously bad links.
>   *>
>   *>    -Dave
>   *>
>
>Why isn't this the Tragedy of the Commons waiting to happen?



Bob - to me, this RON idea is economic arbitrage.  The more likely "tragedy 
of the commons" arises because of the selfish behavior of the AS's in 
seeking to create bottlenecks to extract unjustified rents, and the 
arbitrage reduces its likelihood.


- David
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