The Routing Over Large Clouds Mailing List Archive by date

[Albert Manfredi <manfredi@engr05.comsys.rockwell.com>]

deering@parc.xerox.com wrote:

> NHRP looks, to me, like a conspiracy by the telecommunications companies to
> cause local communication to a nearby router to be turned into long-distance
> calls on which they can charge their usual, exorbitant retail prices to
> end-users.  They know if they don't do that, they'll be relegated to the
> less profitable role of being bandwidth wholesalers, selling PVCs to ISPs.
> NHRP is clearly in the phone companies' interest, but is it in the Internet
> users' interest?

Classic. Very good.

Actually, if the telcos were to become bandwidth wholesalers, why would
they bother with ATM and PVCs? They have already shown that they aren't
jumping on the ATM bandwagon as their own scheme for managing their
bandwidth, but merely offering ATM as a service (much like offering SMDS
or Frame Relay). So if they were really going to become wholesalers only,
then what I would do is to sell SONET pipes. Or if you don't want as much
as 51 Mb/s as the smallest pipe, I'd offer a VT of some size.

To me, if we must pick some "theory" for the motivation behind NHRP, it
would be that the telcos have seen that BISDN is not going to be what
they thought, because the Internet has more or less started taking over
that role, so NHRP is a way of backing into BISDN using the Internet as
the back door.

Of course, the decision to keep the two addressing schemes different is
the real cause of NHRP, is it not?

Bert
manfredi@engr05.comsys.rockwell.com