On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Wayne E. Bouchard wrote:
However, as the edge becomes more intelligent, the core has to adapt to service it. This often cannot be done without adding intelligence into the core. This does not mean that the core should be a participant of the newest and greatest feature but should know about the established features in order to optomize overall function. (eg, multicast.. the core knows about it, but makes no decisions other than routing and replicating packets... It does what it is told. All the rest is handled at the edge and at the RP.)
Funny that you choose multicast as an example. I always thought that it is a very rotten idea, and a security nightmare, too. Distributed transparent caching does not require injection of any routing information from customers into the core routing, and is a lot more efficient than multicasting (i.e. you can always think of multicasting as a caching with cache retention time set to nearly zero).
These good practices, of course, have to start at the vendors. This is an area that has been lacking in recent years. (silly defaults, code that gets pushed into production before its ready because of marketing schedules, etc.)
Recent years? :) ROFL :) --vadim