On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:14:20 GMT, Florian Weimer said:
Because there's a CPE which acts as a mediator, or the host uses some dial-up-type protocol which takes care of the IGP interaction.
So what percent of the *CPE* in the average cable-internet or DSL farm *actually uses* an IGP, and how much of it just does default route and be done with it, because there's only one cable head end to talk to or one central office to talk to at the other end of that DSL? In most topologies, you've got quite a ways to go before you actually need an IGP rather than just "point default route upstream". (We've already heard somebody from the wireless world say they do all their stuff with L1/L2 games and leave L3 as static as possible). Because the last time I unhooked my home router, and connected the coax to one side of the cablemodem and an RJ-45 from the other side to my laptop, the entire routing information that I got from some Comcast server that was definitely the other side of my cablemodem was an IP, netmask, and default route via DHCP, which I don't think qualifies as an IGP. So tell me Florian, what's this magical IGP that my Belkin is doing that's invisible to my Dell when I hook it up directly?