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From: LYNCH@USC-ISIB.ARPA (Dan Lynch)
Newsgroups: mod.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Subnetting and gateways
Message-ID: <8512122201.AA02067@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thu, 12-Dec-85 16:12:49 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8512122201.AA02067
Posted: Thu Dec 12 16:12:49 1985
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Dave,  Your last line was a whopper:  that new procurements have
subnetting support written into them!  That is a rathr drastic
measure and only pushes off the day when gateways will have to
get smart anyway.  I would vote for putting the most intelligence
(and hairy algorithms) in the fewest possible places.  That says to
make gateways smart and let the hosts play dumb.  Let there
be a big database in the sky somewhere (known only to gateways?) that
knows all routes and connectivity gory details.  Then the gateways
should just act as a cache for that monster database and feed their
clients (hosts) info on a demand basis.  
This principle harkens from the days of early radio design when
someone called a halt to the (then) impending decision to make
the "protocol" between transmitters and receivers well "balanced" by spreading
the implementation costs equally.  The observation was made that
when things got going hot and heavy there would be millions of receivers
and only thousands of transmitters, so put the hair in the transmitters
and make the receivers as simple as possible.  (I am indebted to
Dave Boggs for this story.)  So, I argue for making life as simple
as possbile for the multitude of hosts and put the hair in the 
gateways.

Dan
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