RE: Selfish routing

["Deepak Jain" <deepak () ai net>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu]On Behalf Of
> Sean Donelan
> Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 10:52 PM
> To: nanog () merit edu
> Subject: Selfish routing
>
>
>
>
> How do network operators maintain "fairness" in their networks in
> the face of selfish behaivor?  Although this article concerns some
> of the "smart routing" products, we see the same thing with other
> applications (and even malicious applications like worms).
>
> Every 5 years or so we discuss the need for something like a "penalty
> box" for ill behaived traffic.  But in the end, that's too hard.  Its
> easier to add capacity than to solve the fairness problem.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/24/technology/circuits/24next.html
>   Like motorists who cut off other cars as they swerve onto residential
>   streets to speed their own trips, an Internet based on what Dr.
>   Roughgarden and Dr. Tardos call "selfish routing" might indeed speed up
>   the journeys of some data packets. But over all, the two researchers
>   found, the result is quite different. Those shortcuts through side
>   streets often have the effect of delaying other drivers, or in the
>   Internet's case, packets.
> [...]
>   One antidote to selfish routing, the two researchers found, is more
>   capacity. Optimum overall system speeds can be restored despite selfish
>   routing by either doubling the number of lanes on a highway or doubling
>   the bandwidth of a communications link. Particularly in the case of
>   roads, however, that is rarely practical or even desirable.

The article (mentioned RouteScience's "product"). RS didn't seem to talk
about doing anything bad (other than pinging/monitoring) end-user
performance destinations. I suppose that could add an unacceptable amount of
overhead to some connections, but it looked like it just dynamically
adjusted certain BGP prefs in one networks' edge routers out of the
available egress connections. It didn't talk about source routing or
anything that would attempt to make "in-between" hop decisions discretely.
How is this a bad thing? How is this different than what SAVVIS or Internap
claim to do?

Or did I miss the point of the discussion on selfish routing?

Deepak Jain
AiNET