The Routing Over Large Clouds Mailing List Archive by date

[bgleeson@cisco.com]

Andrew,

>
>> Thirdly, the cost of the new VC wrt the original one that the client
>> presumably had open to their default router. Customers need to
>> be able to characterize the total benefit to themselves before
>> they'll be happy having NHRP tell them to place a long-distance
>> ATM call instead of a local call. 
>
>This, in a nutshell, is one of the big NHRP issues: the client is in a 
>position to know how much it wants to pay for the connection but the network 
>is the only place that knows how much it will cost. With NHRP as the
>signaling protocol, there is no way to set up a mutually beneficial deal.
>Even worse than this is a situation with an intervening "low-cost" proxy-client 
>which probably does not communicate any form of cost information with the real 
>client (who is the one with the open wallet).
>

The issue of "cost" (at least as related to dollars / per call) seems completely 
separate from both short-cut protocols (NHRP) and routing protocols (PNNI). Telcos 
have large marketing departments whose sole purpose is to dream up new pricing schemes 
and then with incessant advertising inflict these on the innocent public (reach out 
to your friends and family sort of thing ...) Each new scheme won't affect or be visible
to the routing or short-cut protocols, but will be tweaks to the accounting
and billing system which is fed raw data by network elements and then 
transformed by the algorithm du jour into a billing statement. Decisions
about when to set up a "long-distance" short-cut are going to have to be 
based on local policy using information regarding current telco pricing.

Within a campus environment it would seem quite feasible to implement a "scoping"
policy (like that used with anycast) so that each router progressing a NHRP
request would make a decision on whether to forward the NHRP query or terminate 
it and respond, based on local policy. This decision then bounds the scope of
the subsequent short-cut VCC.

Bryan Gleeson
Cisco.