Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!VAX.FTP.COM!jbvb
From: jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: New Host-requirement RFCs
Message-ID: <8910122137.AA04372@vax.ftp.com>
Date: 12 Oct 89 21:37:13 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 23

It wasn't so much that I didn't like IP Source-Routing; we do it in our PING
as a (useful) debugging tool.  The point I was trying to make was that there
were two IP options I felt were useful in day-to-day applications (Telnet,
FTP, etc.): Source Routing and IP Security.  Of the two, IP Security is
relatively easy (and small) to code (on a DOS PC).  In contrast, IP Source
Routing (loose or strict) is harder to code, hard to do a user interface
for ("telnet foo.bar.com via baz.lusing.net, bar.winning.net", maybe?),
and tremendously hard to explain to the average user:

	"Well, first you find out who is black-holing you with traceroute,
	and then you play around trying to find a gateway somewhere off to
	one side which can actually reach the place you want to go, and then
	you name that gateway in a loose source route..."

I still don't intend to hurry on Source Routing for the applications; the
amount of playing around it took me that day to find a gateway (me not being
a routing hacker) that knew where I wanted to go is not something I want
to inflict on my support people right now.  Maybe if the DNS is extended to
provide some way of querying for gateways by geographic region or the
like, but I don't know of anyone working on that.

James B. VanBokkelen		26 Princess St., Wakefield, MA  01880
FTP Software Inc.		voice: (617) 246-0900  fax: (617) 246-0901