Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!ucbvax!MITVMA.MIT.EDU!KASTEN
From: KASTEN@MITVMA.MIT.EDU (Frank Kastenholz)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Dumb vs. smart host routing
Message-ID: <8805161554.AA17695@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 16 May 88 13:37:24 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 20



>    However you do bring up a problem with single threaded
>machines. What if we modify your scheme so that all routers on a
>network speak some (as yet undefined) protocol to elect one of them
>the "advertised default router" and only this router would respond to
>the "Who can route" message. If this router went down the other
>routers would know and elect a new default router. "Note I have
>simplified the question from "Who can route to network X?" to just a
>simple request for a default router. That router can then send
>redirects later when packets arrive."

The basic idea is good, unfortunately, I need to deal in the real
world (SHUDDER) where a certain well known computer company has made
a network package for PC's and PS/2's that does not understand ICMP
redirect. In fact, the only ICMP that this package supports is Address
Mask Query.

Cheers
Frank Kastenholz