I'll hazard flames and put my oar in... [various incisive comments about the disparate evolution of network connectivity hardware and network routing hardware ommitted] There seems to be some consensus, at least for some individuals/organizations, that bigger/faster/better router hardware is an essential, since the dairy barn approach currently in favor amongst the data comm equipment manufacturers may not prove scalable. However, the discussion so far has focussed on what won't work rather than what specific features etc. are needed. In the cause of keeping pace with the expansion (as well as a partisan reason or two ;-), what sort of beasts should this bigger, faster, better generation of routers look like? If fast packet services and co-location on a LAN milking machine won't cut it, then what's the thinking as to what *is* needed to do the job? Clueing the various equipment manufacturers in as to what direction the hardware should be evolving in is probably at least worth the effort (not to imply that individual efforts have not been underway for some time, but a collective voice often carries more weight). Unfortunately, this goes beyond simply getting a single company in touch with reality because of the plethora of pieces involved in building backbone and delivery services. However, this is probably one of the few "right groups of people" to be formulating these requirements and then bashing the various vendors over the head with them ;-). A fast .02 on my part would be that something in the way of non-blocking backplane design needs to be _advanced_ in order to be able to scale current router technology up. This to start tackling the traffic aggregation problems... Distibuted switching and multiple transport busses seem like steps in the right direction architecturally, but what are the topological and traffic flow realities that instantiation of these methods should be grounded in? Internet and Enterprise networking are markedly different, and at least until recently the focus of the manufacturers has been on the Enterprise... Also, a quick-and-dirty point-to-point delivery mechanism scalable along with the SONET hierarchy wouldn't hurt either, since as has been pointed out the fast-packet overhead for multiple and multi- point signalling (or, worse, data/voice/video integration) becomes an exacerbating bandwidth tax in the traditional point-to-point circuits used to build Internet backbones and ISP networks. This would also address Paul Vixie's all-too-true issues about the ability of the carriers to support the services in an efficient and reliable manner. If the transport is something they are familiar with (T3 being a good example, and ATM of course standing as a bad one... ;), then the reliability of the Net as a whole improves as more ISP's become able to use "supportable carrier transports". Of course, the trick is to get the supportability of T3 with the speed of OC-48... ;-) (not that there are any routers that could *handle* OC-48... arghhh... ;-) :-p) I'll be happy to assist in the bashing in my day job ;-), but since I must in conscience agree with Dennis wholeheartedly on the subject of ATM and it's orthogonal relationship to current service delivery needs, I'm definitely speaking solely as myself here. Curiosity got the better of me, tho, and I'd like to know what other thoughts there are along these lines... Cheers, Paul Paul "Corwin" Frommeyer Work Internet Engineer, CCIE Play ISP Systems Engineer Network Sorcerer At Large Cisco Systems, Inc. Paul's Fone Company pfrommey@cisco.com corwin@palas.com *** Speaking solely for myself unless otherwise noted ***