[ NNSquad ] Re: INTELLIGENT network management? (far from IP)

[Richard Bennett <richard@bennett.com>]

It's not clear how the "endpoint" influences control over routing unless 
it's doing some form of source routing, which is certainly not 
commonplace. It appears to me that the ITXC system chooses routes from 
some place upstream from the actual endpoint, and thus is actually an 
enrichment of the Internet core rather than a generic "endpoint" 
application. I put "endpoint" in air quotes because it's a deceptive 
concept. TCP is regarded as an "endpoint" because it runs on a user 
machine, but the functions it provides are actually central to the 
stability of the core. So it's really a core function from the control 
perspective, just one that happens to rely on the end user's CPU and 
memory to operate.

So what's the deal with route selection, did you use MPLS, VPNs, or some 
similar hack?

RB

Tom Evslin wrote:
> Hi:
>
> Without belaboring the point, our experience at ITXC was that the necessary
> QoS for VoIP could be provided from the edge. We didn't need MPLS or the
> like but we did need to have the kind of influence on routing which an
> endpoint can have and visibility into how various routes that our traffic
>   
--
Richard Bennett