On Sun, 1 Oct 2023 at 21:19, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> wrote:
Unfortunately, many coders today have not read Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, and like the unfortunate Crab, consider their FIB compression algorithms to be unbreakable[0].
In short: if you count on FIB compression working at a compression ratio greater than 1 in order for your network to function, you had better have a good plan for what to do when your phone rings at 3am because your FIB has just become incompressible. ^_^;
I think if we make the argument 'devices must always work' no device satisfies it today. There are already a lot of assumptions and compromises which cause them to work 'highly likely in most practical scenarios'. Certainly if we were to try to formally prove, we could prove that everything is terrible, PPS under the worst-case situation is beyond useless on devices people intuitively consider 'wire speed'. I fully agree fundamentally FIB compression is not safe, but also that ship has sailed, nothing we do is safe. But is it marketable? Likely answer is resoundingly yes. I do feel that often people underestimate the amount of risk they carry, and overestimate the importance of the risks they understand. Since the vast majority of risks are carried without understanding them. But intuitively we like to think we have good visibility into our risks and any recognised risk therefore automatically is an important risk. -- ++ytti