Subject: Bay Network's controversial protocols

From: Chip Elliott <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 95 09:09:31 -0500

Henning writes:

Anybody know what's going on here?

"Communications Week reports that Bay Networks has teamed up with 
InVision Systems and Syzygy Communications (both software developers) 
to provide ATM-like quality-of-service features over router-based, IP 
internetworks.  According to the article, the new protocols are 
designed for transporting multimedia across packet networks but are 
technically controversial.

I believe they are releasing DVMRP, and am sure that they
will be releasing ST-II as Wellfleet has had a working version
for some time now.

Not sure if there's any connection between the two, as ST-II
traditionally does not use multicast routing. But maybe they
have some weird hybrid...?

The ST-II protocol is undoubtedly the "technically controversial"
part of the whole thing.

PIM and RSVP are also scheduled, it seems.

-- Chip

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From: Jon Crowcroft <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 95 17:07:16 +0000

>internetworks.  

sounds to me = like their management responded to a real market (the
DSI net) sensibly

meanwhile the larger market (ip and ip6 with class D, mbone, rtp and
rsvp) needs a sponsor like this to get the router code pepped up - but
if anyone is constructing routers that can fulfill an ST flow spec,
then it'll be very easy for them to apply the same queueing code to
rsvp classified packets, so we can't lose by this excercise (its a bit
like the forwarding service model equivalent of what happed with
multi-protocol routing for topology - a mixed economy is i think a
useful thing...)

if i was writing a call for tender statement and a detailed spec, i
would strongly consider making  the int-serv serice model a manadatory
requirement real soon now to prompt them to re-apply the queuing code
to IP - surely there are slightly more IP machiens out there that
could immediately take advantage of this unchanged (given hopefully a
user space RSVP client is out), than ST ones...

but i can understand anyone following bbn & wellfleet down the
lucrative, albeit closed, ST path a short way....

cheers
jon