Re: multiple TCP connections

["Steve Byan" <steve_byan@hotmail.com>]

Julo wrote:

>There is no standard way of doing link agregation. That's the main reason
>for having
>the session (+reliability).

Being ignorant of networking practices, it seems to me that link aggregation 
is more appropriately solved as a routing problem than as part of the 
application protocol. IP supports multiple links per end-point. If an 
end-point has two links, then it must have at least two routes to it. From 
there it's just a question of getting the routing to load-balance between 
the routes.

What am I missing? Is it that the currently-available TCP/IP implementations 
and routers don't do load-balancing on links, due to  problems introduced by 
out-of-order arrival?



I also don't understand the point about reliability. A multi-homed host 
already has hardware redundancy, and even if today's commercially-available 
routers and TCP/IP stacks don't do load balancing they surely understand how 
to use a different route in the event of link failure.

Is the claim of reliability based on just having multiple links, or is it 
based on using the command reference numbers to recover a failed TCP 
session?


Is there work going on elsewhere in the IETF with respect to link 
aggregation?

Thanks.

Regards,
-Steve

Steve Byan <stephen.byan@quantum.com>
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com