Re: Automatically connecting stub networks...

[Simon Hobson <[e-mail]>]

Ted Lemon <[e-mail]> wrote:

>> and there should be a requirement also on 'nesting' - a stub that attaches to a stub that attaches to a stub...

> Who would we need the extra bit?  This is a stub router, so by definition it can only use one prefix. Unless you are thinking that a stub router might route for more than one stub network?

In my experience, "the typical home user" does not understand networking beyond "network cable with RJ45 plugs into hole where it fits". In a wired network, they'd expect to plug a network cable into a "network" socket and it'll work.
I could also see situations where someone see's a wireless network (itself generated by a stub router) and connects "stuff" to it. An analogy would be where people have used wireless extenders which advertise the repeated signal as a different name to the original WiFi SSID. If a stub router provided a WiFi downstream service, then I could see users expecting to be able to use it as a repeater (whether the upstream connection os wired or wireless) and connect stuff to it - and some of that stuff may itself be a stub network.

There's an element here of contriving a situation, but we don't know what inventive uses people might come up with. So take a large(ish) house, and because ti was convenient for the telco or developer, the phone/internet line comes into one end of the house. User gets some (say) home automation stuff, and the hub doesn't connect reliably to the main WiFi. User happens to have a repeater (which is actually a stub router, but the user doesn't know that) which is able to connect to the main WiFi and provide a signal that the HA hub can connect to. So HA hub is a stub router, with another stub router as it's upstream connection. The user, who knows nothing about routers and "technical stuff", expects it to work ...
I've seen networks with routers used as switches - with the uplink port connected to the main network, so two different networks with different IPv4 setups etc - and the user is then confused as to why they have seemingly random connection problems (as their mobile device roams from one network to the other). In one case I sorted out, they had done this, but also had Sonos gear that automatically bridges everything together using [R]STP - and that was an "interesting" network !

This may be a case of user education, if that is possible.

Simon