[e2e] number of flows per unit time in routers

[Bill Sommerfeld]

On Fri, 2005-10-28 at 20:16, grenville armitage wrote: 
> It seems there are increasing numbers of places in today's internet where devices
> do not immediately deallocate state associated with forwarding a packet once the
> packet's passed through. One could argue the internet's not really 'connectionless'
> in the purest sense anymore. 

one could also use that line of argument to say that any device with an
arp cache isn't connectionless.

I think the key distinction here is between a true cache (arp, flow
cache, etc.) where any entry can be discarded at any time, and
unrecoverable state (such as what you find in the middle of a NAT, an
application-layer gateway, or a stateful firewall).

						- Bill