[e2e] Re:Are you interested in TOEs and related issues

[RJ Atkinson]

I've trimmed cross-posting a lot in this note.

The thread so far has made numerous assumptions (e.g. small packets
consume as much buffer space as big packets in real routers) about
how modern switches/routers are designed.   The validity of many
of those assumptions is not obvious to me.

So from where I sit, this thread has long since devolved into
pretty theoretical territory ("if people were silly enough
to build their routers in a certain way, and the following
unusual event occurs, then on certain days of the week this
bad event might happen...").

It might make sense for the folks interested in this thread
to actually pull back a bit, consider how actual shipping
switches/routers are built, and restart from there.

Oh, and the subject line probably needs updating, since how one
builds a switch/router is farther divorced from the questions
of whether TOEs make technical/economic sense than some folks
here might believe.[1]

Cheers,

Ran
rja at extremenetworks.com

[1] I don't work on a host/server stack these days, but my past 
experience
is pretty closely aligned with Craig's earlier summary of community
experience with TOEs from the 1980s.