Re: [rrg] Anycast in the core architecture

[Eliot Lear <lear at cisco.com>]

On 4/22/09 6:03 PM, Tony Li wrote:
> Anycast looks to be a pure application/service layer issue.  Yes, ok, 
> you COULD aggregate anycast for common services that have the same 
> source.  I don't see how that helps the general case of services that 
> are supported by multiple sources (e.g., DNS, NTP).  Those don't seem 
> to aggregate at all.

At one point I pondered this idea.  It would be to have several dozens 
of blocks of which people could choose one for their anycast service, 
based on what sorts of localities they wished to cover (and hence 
purchase service from).  The problem is that the number of permutations 
of those localities gets large fast, and it also violates a rule I 
imposed on myself when thinking about the problem, that perhaps is worth 
sharing:

    Any solution should scale up with market competition.

That one is arguably difficult to manage.