On Sun, Jul 13, 1997 at 03:08:00PM -0800, Randy Bush wrote:
There is one significant difference between routed and switched backbones. The hops on routed backbones can be seen by end users using tools such as traceroute. On switched backbones, the hops are still there, but can not be seen by end users. Hence the marketing perception is different though the results are really the same.
Actually, from the IP packet's standpoint, no, the results aren't necessarily the same. It's unlikely, but possible, that a switched mesh backbone could forward some packets that a routed one couldn't, due to TTL issues. Didn't some older kernels set rediculously low TTLs on IP packets?
The router side could turn the argument. "With a routed backbone, you can actually SEE what is happening to your packets. It is not a hidden unknown, thus prone to failure you can not diagnose. With routers you know it went bad at nqu1. With switches, it just went bad."
It's a problem I'd accept for this amount of debugging flexibility, though. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592