[governance] Uni.X to Uni.X .NETworking - Routing vs. Forwarding

[Jim Fleming]

Given the following number plan, some may consider that to be what is called
a /52 allocation.

01.01.DDDD.000.DDDDDDD.0.1.<<<<32 bits>>>>.0.000000.0.1.DDD

The 52 comes from the 20+32=52 prefix. When a message arrives at their site,
they assume that
the 52 bits have been "consumed" (used) and they then work on the rest of
the bits. The global
transport consumes the bits, whether Routing was done or Forwarding was
done.

Some current packet networks really do not do Routing, even though they call
it that. They do
Forwarding. They look at a destination address and Forward to the next hop
they think is "best".
Messages can travel a long way to get across the street. It is sometimes a
very inefficient way of
running a NotWork.

With Forwarding, the bits are picked off in small hunks and consumed as the
message flows
along a path, directed by the creator of the message. The first 20 bits in
the message address
could be used as hop-by-hop specifiers and once the message reaches the
place where the
32-bits are processed, Routing kicks back in.

An example of this can be seen with metro addressing. The following 20 bits
can indicate to
first send the message to the CORPS realm, then to the MOBILE Realm, then to
one of 16
SuperStates and finally to one of 128 Metro Areas.

01.01.DDDD.000.DDDDDDD.0.1

The Routing Regions or landing zones are logical and not carrier, company or
wire circuit
specific. Nodes know where they are in a relative sense and they then know
what bits to look
at to move the message to the next hop or zone.

00 - .GOD
01 - .CORPS
10 - .COUNTRY
11 - .YOU

00 - .EARTH
01 - .MOBILE
10 - .MOON
11 - .MARS

DDDD for 16 Super States - The Lower-48 maps as 3 States per Super State
DDDDDDD for 128 metro areas in each Super State

For those that only look at the world from a Forwarding point of view, they
can still pick
off those 20 bits and translate that to: Forward to ISPn. where they pick n
from a table
they have decided to sort traffic classes into. In some cases, as an ISP
they may only have
4 or 5 real choices, so the table may be large but the contents are very
small, because with
Forwarding, one is just making a simple decision of where to send the
message next, if it
is sent at all.

With Routing, virtual service providers (VSP) in the Routing business,
populate the various realms
or landing zones and agree to move messages based on the zone they have
decided to
serve and the zones they have contracted to reach. As an example, a VSP
along the CORPS
and MOBILE path, would have connections to all 16 of the SuperStates and
route messages
directly to them, where they then flow into a Metro area. The bits are
"consumed" along the way
and the notion of TTL or Hop-Count is not the same because the Routing is
very well-behaved
because of the way it is constructed between VSPs. In other words, they
trust each other that
they know what they are doing. With Forwarding, that trust is not there and
a Hop-Count is
decremented to prevent messages from circulating in the network forever.

Again, returning to the wide-spread Forwarding mind-set, that dominates a
lot of "Internet
Governance", the 20-bit prefix can be processed and there is no reason why
it can not be
delivered directly to the SuperState and MetroArea in one hop. There is no
requirement that
the path be followed, and the message is not marked in any way that it did
take the suggested
path. That would require more bits and use more band-width.

>From an Internet Governance point of view, people get very nervous about
Routing, and
assume that Forwarding is safer, because they do not see choke points,
proxies and places
where messages can be recorded or dropped. History has shown that not to be
the case.
Even with Forwarding, and especially with the BGP Black-Holers, people have
seen very
bad actors attempting to impose their views on the net by strong-arming ISPs
by interfering
with their traffic. That is of course how many of the DNS problems came to
be, with BGP
Black-Holers forcing ISPs to use their software and servers or face
black-holing or other
message flow interference. With Virtualization and true Routing, it can be
shown that this
becomes more difficult to do because messages can take many physical paths
to get to the
various Virtual ISPs or Realms or Landing Zones.

People involved in Internet Governance have to be very careful that
Forwarding-Mind-Set
people do not continue to dominate all forums. They may do that to attempt
to continue
having their choke-points and toll-booths. It is ironic that they will claim
that Routing has
the danger of having those choke-points, when Forwarding has proven to open
that opportunity.
Forwarding may work in small networks where everyone assumes that all people
play nice.
That is not the case. The "NET" is no longer a college campus or U.S. DOD
military operation.
Large numbers of people have spent a lot of time developing true Routing
solutions to route
around the Forwarding NotWork. A Number Plan should consider Routing and
Forwarding.
Routing can be added, and the Forwarding can be preserved, or at least the
Forwarding
determined to be worth saving, based on band-width and not who uses what
root servers.

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