Hedge 144: IPv6 Lessons Learned
We don’t often do a post-mortem on the development and deployment of new protocols … but here at the Hedge we’re going to brave these deep waters to discuss some of the lessons we can learn from the development and deployment of IPv6, especially as they apply to design and deployment cycles in the “average network” (if there is such at thing). Join us as James Harr, Tom Ammon, and Russ White consider the lessons we can learn from IPv6’s checkered history.
Hedge 142: George Michaelson and the Pace of IPv6 Deployment
IPv6 is still being deployed, years after the first world IPv6 day, even more years after its first acceptance as an Internet standard by the IETF. What is taking so long? George Michaelson (APNIC) joins Tom Ammon and Russ White on this episode of the Hedge to discuss the current pace of IPv6 deployment, where there are wins, and why things might be moving more slowly in other areas.
Hedge 141: Improving WAN Router Performance
Wide area networks in large-scale cores tend to be performance choke-points—partially because of differentials between the traffic they’re receiving from data center fabrics, campuses, and other sources, and the availability of outbound bandwidth, and partially because these routers tend to be a focal point for policy implementation. Rachee Singh joins Tom Ammon, Jeff Tantsura, and Russ White to discuss “Shoofly, a tool for provisioning wide-area backbones that bypasses routers by keeping traffic in the optical domain for as long as possible.”
Hedge 140: Aftab S and RIR Policies
Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) assign and manage numbered Internet resources like IPv4 address space, IPv6 address, and AS numbers. If you ever try to get address space or an AS number, though, it might seem like the policies the RIRs use to determine what kin and scale of resources you can get are a bit arbitrary (or even, perhaps, odd). Aftab Siddiqui joins Russ White and Tom Ammon to explain how and why these policies are set the way they are.
Hedge 139: Open Source Supply Chain Security
There is a rising concern about the security of open source projects—particularly in terms of open source software supply chain. Alistair Woodman, who works closely with multiple open source software projects, joins Tom and Russ to discuss the reality of securing open source projects. The final answer? Essentially, buyer—or in the case of open source software, user—beware.
Hedge 138: The Robustness Principle
Most network engineers take it as a “given” that the robustness principle is the “right way” to build protocols and networks—”be conservative in what you send, and liberal in what you receive.” The idea behind the robustness principle is that implementations should implement specifications as accurately as possible, but they should also accept malformed and otherwise erroneous data, process the best they can, and drop the bits they cannot process. This should allow the network to operate correctly in the face of defects and other failures. A recent draft, draft-iab-protocol-maintenance/, challenges the assumptions behind the robustness principle. Join Tom and Russ as they discuss the robustness principle and its potential problems.
