Re: [Pppext] warning suggestions for draft-bberry-pppoe-credit

[James Carlson <[e-mail]>]

Mark Lanzo writes:
> > Going back 20+ years, I have had considerable experience deploying
> > protocols over radio links.  The best design would be to put a router
> > at every radio link.  Goodness gracious, TAL did it commercially going
> > on 15 years ago!  Simple 2 port routers are cheap!
> 
> Hmm ... but this does not address the problem; it is not the issue.

Actually, it is exactly the issue.

> The issue is that the routers have to _connect_ to the radios
> somehow.  The radios aren't integral to the router; the radios and 
> router aren't even made by the same company.

This is the part that's completely broken.

You're implicitly assuming that the device labeled "radio" is able to
implement Ethernet and PPPoE, and be modified to accept this new PPPoE
feature, and that you can modify the box labeled "router" accordingly,
but that it is impossible to terminate PPP or route IP in the "radio,"
and that device couldn't possibly manage to do the work without having
an external router as a crutch.  Why is that?

The answer likely revolves around some notion of what's "too hard" or
"too expensive" to implement in a small embedded system.  Assuming
that's the case, it's easy to reject the proposal on the grounds that
designing protocols based around today's hardware limitations is both
short-sighted and without merit.

("Without merit" because by the time you actually get all this stuff
deployed and widely interoperable, the original problem is long since
forgotten.)

> Meanwhile, I believe it was thought that not reinventing the wheel, and 
> trying to have a published standard which radio manufacturers and router
> vendors could agree to use for interconnecting their equipment, would be 
> a Good Thing.  Is there some other protocol out there already, which is a
> better choice [especially one whose very mention won't automatically 
> trigger a knee-jerk negative reflexive action]?

Yes.  Terminate PPP in the device labeled "radio," and put plain old
IP on the Ethernet.

No new protocols required.

> Would it help if the proposal began with a clearer explanation that 
> although it "extends" PPPoE, that the usage is not in fact for PPPoE
> as traditionally recognized, but instead is being used as a protocol
> for using an ethernet as a backplace for communicating with external
> serial-port "concentrators"?  Is there a different RFC this group 
> should be looking at, which already provides just this sort of thing?

L2TP can do such a thing, but it's clearly, just like PPPoE, an
unnecessarily complex solution.

-- 
James Carlson, KISS Network                    <[e-mail]>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive         71.232W   Vox [phone]
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax [phone]

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