I've been poking around with end-host / end-network multihoming at the transport and application layers. See, e.g., MONET, a multi-homed Web proxy designed to achieve high availability:

http://nms.lcs.mit.edu/ron/ronweb/

In general, this kind of end-host informed multihoming has a lot of potential for improving availability and performance (because the end-points actually see what they're getting), but at the cost of some extra implementation complexity. The shim6 mechanism (in the general sense, not speaking to the specifics of shim6 negotiation, etc.), when augmented with some end-host smarts, could be a nice way to do end-host based multihoming in the ipv6 context.

But, isn't that just a host based approach in the end and not a solution for entire networks? And if it isn't for entire networks, why do I need any to any connectivity anyway? I know, there's nothing that prevents it (or any schema like it, including shim6) from being network to network, but, good grief, what a huge amount of overhead to design around a requirements flaw. This sort of Moebius strip logic that's used to explain/solve the problem which has been created is fun to watch, but really just sucks in the end. One could argue, however, that we don't need multihoming, we all need to pour money into CDNs for things we really care about and lets somebody else do the worrying. . And it all seems like such a hack. Hurray, network based services are back. The PSTN is dead, long live the PSTN. Argh. Thanks, Christian The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential, proprietary, and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from all computers. 163