The MPLS WG Archive

[Paul Doolan <pdoolan@ennovatenetworks.com>]

Eric,
      don't know how it's going at your end but the private mail to me
is 5 to 2 in favor of
keeping this up. Which only goes to prove there are some folks with too
much time on
their hands;-) But we've probably tried the patience of a bigger number
of folks. So I'm
done after this.


Eric>but rhetorically sliding from the  technical meaning ("IP provides
an unreliable
Eric>service")  to  the  common  meaning  ("the Internet  is
unreliable")  is  a
Eric>fallacy.

  True but one which I didn't commit.

>Paul> As an aside I'm not aware of anyone who is suggesting building
VPNs to
>Paul> deliver email.
Eric>I think that close to 100% of those who have VPNs use them for
email.

  And I agree with you. But its not got much to do with what I said has
it ?

Eric>Recognizing that "deliver email" is  really placeholder for
"support a large
Eric>and  varied set  of  networking  applications", let's  rephrase:
if BGP  is
Eric>scalable enough to  handle a large and varied  set of Internet
applications,
Eric>why should we think it is not scalable enough to handle VPNs."

    Have you moved into marketing :-)

    BGP doesn't 'handle ...... applications'. It distributes
reachability information
    in the IDR system. We may agree or disagree on how well it scales in
that
    application. That has little bearing on whether that property
applies in this
    different application.

Eric>Of course, the fact  that BGP is scalable enough to handle  VPNs
does not by
Eric>itself imply  that VPNs  should be built  according to RFC2547,
because the
Eric>scalability of BGP is only one of the issues.

     Ignoring the contentious first part I have to say I'm glad we can
agree on one point.
     The scalability of BGP is only one of the issues with the protocol
which call its use in
     this application into question. And there are other issues with
building VPNs as well.

pd