Re: [v6ops] new draft: draft-taylor-v6ops-fragdrop

[Joe Touch <[e-mail]>]

On 11/1/2012 12:24 PM, [e-mail] wrote:
>> IMO, a router that looks beyond the IP headers is doing DPI. I realize
>> others think DPI means looking at the E2E data.
>>
>> However, to avoid confusion, I'll just state that:
>>
>> - anything that looks only at an IP packet is a router
>>
>> - anything that looks at higher layer headers isn't a router anymore. it
>> might be a firewall, filter, etc., and whether the box can do that at
>> line rate is a question customers should ask their vendors, not a
>> problem the IETF should solve.
>
> This looks like a nice theoretical classification that is rather useless
> in practice.
>
> A modern router with multiple 10G interfaces (say a Juniper MX or Cisco
> ASR9K) can be configured to look at higher layers. The primary function
> of these routers is forwarding packets at high speeds. The fact that
> these routers *can* look at higher layers is not going to make me stop
> calling them routers. I don't think I'm alone here :-)

Fine.

Then either get your vendors - of whatever boxes you want to call them - 
to support the current option structure, or choose not to support IPv6.

There are choices here.

Joe