Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!UDEL.EDU!Mills
From: Mills@UDEL.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  RIP vs. HELLO
Message-ID: <8806101225.aa19161@Huey.UDEL.EDU>
Date: 10 Jun 88 16:25:56 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 30

Kent,

So far as I know, the Hellospeak (or whatever else it may be called)
routing scheme has been implemented in full only for the fuzzballs, about
two dozen of which are skulking about the Internet now. Partial implementations
have been done for the cisco router and gated daemon for Unix 4.3bsd. A lot
of work went into the design and refinement of Hellospeak in such rugged
environments as the present NSFNET Backbone, but as in many other cases like
this, the sheer weight of Unix ubiquity and availability of RIP will
undoubtably prevail. I would argue and expect many RIP implementors to
agree that neither Hellospeak nor RIP are suitable for use on an extended
WAN topoplogy and that link-state algorithms such as used in the new
NSFNET Backbone are more appropriate. As for enhancements to the traditional
Bellman-Ford algorithms, such as hold-down, split-horizon and so forth,
there is considerable disagreement within the RIP community as to whether and
how to do these things and I suspect agreement will never be reached. These
things and some other tricks have in fact been done for Hellospeak, but
have not been thoroughly documented and probably will not be replicated.

The NSFNET Backbone fuzzbunch belongs to NSF; however, by agreement Merit
& Co. is entitled to them should they choose to exercise that option. However,
I doubt very much IBM wants to get into the fuzzball maintenance business,
to say the least! Present plans are to pull down the serial lines at the
end of July, which will leave them isolated on their local Ethers.

Personally, I would like to see the fuzzies remain in place for use as
remote observation platforms and as time servers for the various regional
nets. It is not clear whether the regionals will agree to support this
(hardware maintenance) or not.

Dave