M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science                           IEN 144
                                                          March 11, 1980


Source Routing for Campus-Wide Internet Transport

by Jerome H. Saltzer


This note proposes that for the internet addressing layer of a

campus-wide local area network, the source routing mechanism suggested

by Farber and Vittal [1] and discussed by Sunshine[2] may have several

advantages over hop-by-hop routing schemes based on universal or

hierarchical addresses.  The campus environment, as defined and

discussed in local network note 21, requires many subnetworks connected

by gateways, and it has a variety of other special properties of

administration. The primary advantage of source routing in this

environment is simplicity of implementation of the gateways that

interconnect subnetworks with consequent improvement in cost,

maintenance effort, recovery time, ease of trouble location, and overall

management effort.  Secondary advantages of source routing when applied

to the campus environment include:  1) a clearer separation of physical

addressing from logical naming mechanisms in protocol design, 2)

elimination of stability, oscillation, and packet looping

considerations, 3) ability for a source to control precisely a route so

as to optimize a particular service goal (e.g., response time,

reliability, bandwidth, usage policy, or privacy), 4) deferment to a

higher protocol level of the detailed design of the

fragmentation/reassembly strategy required to pass through intermediate

networks with small maximum packet sizes, and finally, 5) the ability to

accommodate both official and unofficial gateways between subnetworks.


Two disadvantages of source routing are:  1) that the route used will

tend to be relatively static and therefore cannot optimize use of

                                   2


communication facilities as well as the potentially more dynamic

hop-by-hop route selection system, and 2) route selection must be

accomplished somehow, and sine the mechanism to do this selection is not

specified by this protocol level, some additional mechanism must be

designed to provide this function. The argument made here is that the

first disadvantage is not serious in an environment such as a campus, in

which the los cost of high bandwidth communication can make optimization

less important.  The second disadvantage may be less serious than it

appears when one considers that a higher-level name resolution service

is required in any case, and that service cal also provide route

selection service.  In fact, it may be possible to turn this need into

an advantage, since there can be more than one such route selection

service, one of which is based on simple global or hierarchical network

names, while another, perhaps experimental or research service, provides

an elaborate interactive directory search facility or a private route

pattern.


How Source Routing Works


Source routing among a collection of subnetworks is a mechanism that

comes into play at the next-to-bottom layer of protocol, sometimes

called the "internet" layer.  Figure one illustrates this two-layer

arrangement.  The bottom layer, which we may call the "local transport"

layer, is a protocol for delivery of a packet within a local subnetwork

such as a single ETHERNET, CHAOSNET, of L.C.S. Ringnet.  Routing within

the local transport protocol is usually accomplished by physically

broadcasting the packet to all nodes on one subnetwork; any node that

                                   3


recognizes its own local transport address at the front of the packet

will receive it.


     local transport                internet transport
     protocol                       protocol

     +---------+  ---
     |         |     \
     +---------+      |
     |  local  |      |  local
     |transport|       > transport
     | address |      |  packet
     +---------+      |  header
     |         |     /
     +---------+  ---    ------->   +---------+  ---
     |         |     \              |         |     \
     |         |      |             +---------+      |
     |         |      |             | internet|      |  internet
     |         |      |             |transport|       > transport
     |         |      |             | address |      |  packet
     |         |      |  local      +---------+      |  header
     |         |       > transport  |         |     /
     |         |      |  packet     +---------+  ---
     |         |      |  contents   |         |     \
     |         |      |             |         |      |  internet
     |         |      |             |         |       > transport
     |         |      |             |         |      |  packet
     |         |     /              |         |     /   contents
     +---------+  ---    ------->   +---------+  ---


The higher level protocols carried in the internet transport pactet
contents take care of reliability control, FIFO byte streams,
source/sink flow control, file transfer, remote login, etc.


             Relationship between local transport protocol,
                      internet transport protocol,
                   and other communication protocols.


                               Figure 1.


The next-to-bottom, internet layer is a protocol for delivery of a

packet between any pair of nodes on the campus.  One starts a packet on

its way by placing the address of a gateway in the local transport

address field, and what may be called the "internet name" of the target

                                   4


node in the internet name field.  The local transport medium carries the

packet to the gateway, which examines the internet name field to

determine what local transport address to use to get to the next

gateway.  In turn, the internet name field is again interpreted by

successive network gateways to determine which local transport address

should be used for the next step of this packet's journey.


There have been suggested several alternatives for the interpretation of

internet names.  Three of these are:


1)   Unstructured unique identifier.  Every node on the campus-wide net

     has as its internet name a permanent unique identifier. Each

     gateway has a set of tables or other rules that allow it to

     determine the appropriate next step in the route to every possible

     named node.  (Thus this approach is sometimes called "step-by-step"

     or "hop-by-hop" routing.)  In its most general form, the unique

     identifier may be interpreted either as the name of the node or as

     the name of the point on the network to which the node is attached,

     depending on the network's convention on what happens to the name

     if a node is disconnected and reattached to a different place.


2)   Hierarchical identifier.  In this alternate form of hop-by-hop

     routing, the internet name of each node is a multi-part field.  For

     example, a two-part hierarchical identifier might consist of an

     identifier of the subnetwork to which the node is attached and a

     node number (usually the local transport address) of the node on

     that subnet.  For this kind of internet name, each gateway has a

     set of tables or rules that allow it to determine the appropriate

     next step in the route to every possible named subnetwork.  Since

                                   5


     there are many fewer subnetworks than nodes, these tables should be

     much smaller than in the case of the unstructured unique

     identifier.  Reduction in table size is the chief attraction of the

     hierarchical identifier, and the argument can be extended to

     identifiers of more than two parts, network groups, and still

     smaller tables. Because the hierarchical identifier contains

     components that are names of parts of the network, this kind of

     network name is almost always thought of as naming the network

     attachment point, rather the node that is attached to it.


3)   Source route.  The internet transport layer contains, instead of a

     network name, a variable-length string of local transport

     addresses, with the property that each gateway merely takes the

     next local transport address from the string, moves the address to

     the local transport protocol address field, and sends the packet on

     its way.  With this approach, a gateway needs no knowledge of

     network topology, so the tables required for hop-by-hop routing

     vanish.  A source route unquestionably identifies a network

     attachment point, quite independently of what node is attached to

     that point. Any attempt to make an interpretation that a source

     route identifies a node rather than an attachment point would be

     strained at best.


Note that if the network is arranged as a two-level hierarchy, with a

single "supernet" acting as the only communication path among all the

remaining subnetworks, then the two-part hierarchical identifier taken

together with the local address of the nearest gateway to the supernet

is an example of a source route and the gateways can become very simple.

                                   6


However, the hierarchical identifier can be used even if the network

topology is not hierarchical, by providing an appropriate routing

algorithm in the gateways.  In that case, only the final part of the

route; even it might actually be interpreted or mapped by the final

gateway.


Note also, that it is common for a single node to have several

activities underway at once.  For example, a time-sharing system may

have many logged-in users, several of which are using the network for

communication between their terminal and the time-sharing system.  The

receiving network software in the time-sharing system then finds that it

is acting as a kind of gateway, between the campus network on the one

hand and the array of activities inside the node on the other.  As a

result it is commonly proposed that the internet name not identify a

node but rather a particular activity within that node.  This proposal

usually takes the form of an additional field in a hierarchical internet

name, known as a "socket number" or "link". There is a controversy over

what level of protocol should recognize this socket number, and how big

it should be.  For our purpose, it is sufficient to observe that the

socket number is a kind of route for use by the receiving node.


The mechanics of operation of a source-routing gateway as a packet

passes through are quite simple; this simplicity is the chief attraction

of source routing.  There are several alternative detailed approaches;

to permit explicit discussion one implementation will be described here.

[This implementation is only a slight variation of the one proposed by

Farber and Vittal.]  This implementation dynamically constructs a

reverse route.  It works as follows:

                                   7


1)   The internet source route field is structured as shown in figure

     two, with two one-byte numerical fields and a variable (but

     constant for the lifetime of the packet) number of bytes of route.

     Each local transport address uses an integral number of bytes,

     typically one or two.  The first count remains constant for the

     lifetime of the packet; the second is updated at each gateway.


2)   A gateway receives a packet using the local transport protocol of

     one network (call it network A) and wants to sent it out on a

     second network (call it network B).  For the moment, assume that a

     gateway interconnects exactly two nets; generalization for a

     multinet gateway involves a simple conceptual extension described

     later.


3)   The gateway parses the internet source route field using the "start

     of next local address" count to obtain the next step of the route.

     (We presume that the gateway is endowed with the knowledge of how

     many bytes of route are required by network B.)  It extracts the

     appropriate bytes and places them in the local transport address

     field for network B. Then it replaces those bytes of the internet

     source route with its own local transport address on network B,

     thus contributing its part of the reverse route.  Finally, it

     increments the "start of next address" field by the number of bytes

     it extracted from the route, and it invokes the local transport

     level to send the packet out on network B.  (Note that this reverse

     route construction strategy assumes that all paths are

     bi-directional and that all local transport addresses on any single

     network are of the same size.)

                                   8


                          +------------------+
                          |                  |
                          | route byte count |
                          |                  |
                          +------------------+
                          | start of         |
                          |    next local    |
                          |          address |
                          +------------------+
                          |                  |
                          | local address 1  |
                          |                  |
                          | - - - - - - - -  |
                          |                  |
                          | local address 2  |
                          |                  |
                          | - - - - - - - -  |
                          |                  |
                          | local address 3  |
                          |                  |
                          | - - - - - - - -  |
                          |                  |
                          |                  |
                          |                  |
                          |                  |
                          |                  |
                          |-----------/      |
                                     /       |
                          |-------/ /--------|
                                |      /
                          |     /------------|
                          |                  |
                          |                  |
                          | - - - - - - - -  |
                          |                  |
                          | local address n  |
                          |                  |
                          +------------------+


          Possible implementation of an internet source route


                               Figure 2.


4)   If a gateway interconnects three or more subnetworks, it simply

     behaves as though it is itself a subnetwork with three or more

     gateways to other subnetworks.  The next byte of route is

                                   9


     interpreted as a local address on this hypothetical subnetwork.

     The reverse route is constructed as usual.


The operation described above is repeated at every gateway, and may also

be repeated one or more times inside the target node to dispatch the

packet to the correct activity within that node.  Similarly, when a

packet originates, it may go through one or more route selection steps

before it actually is placed on the first subnetwork.  [From a viewpoint

of telephone terminology, a source route system is a kind of

electronically implemented step-by-step switch, with each subnetwork,

multi- mailed gateway, as multi-activity host acting as a multi-position

switch.  However, because it is electronically implemented and thus not

restricted to ten-position mechanical switches, this step-by-step switch

does not have the limitations of the corresponding telephone

technology.]


Where Routes Come From


For source routing to work, the source of a message must somehow know

what route to place in the internet header of a packet before it

launches the packet into the internet environment.  Thus requirement

superficially implies that every source of packets be very

knowledgeable, which sounds like a terrible burden to small nodes--every

node on the network would have to be able to create or deduce suitable

routes.  In fact, that implication is unwarranted--all that is really

required is that every source of messages know of a place in the network

to ask to obtain routes.  Once a source has learned of a suitable route

to a particular target, it can encache that fact and reuse it as often

                                   10


and as long as it wants--until the route fails to work or there is a

reason for it to believe that a better route exists.


The most general form of route selection would come by providing one (or

more, for reliability, quick response, or administrative convenience)

routing server in the network.   A routing server is a specialized node

whose function is to maintain an internal representation of the topology

of network interconnection (along with any useful class-of-service

information about various subnetworks and gateways) and also to act as a

name resolver. The desired target must, of course, have some name,

perhaps the unstructured unique identifier or hierarchical identifier

earlier suggested as an alternative internet name.  The routing server

then implements a map from internet names to routes.


There are two independent dimensions along which this routing server may

be more or less sophisticated:  in its name-resolution abilities, and in

its route-choosing abilities.  To begin with, let us assume a particular

fixed, fairly simple name resolution scheme--say a hierarchical

identifier--with the understanding that this choice has little or no

bearing on routing sophistication. The routing choice mechanism, then,

can range from a simple fixed table of routes from all possible sources

to all possible targets (perhaps cleverly compressed with knowledge of

the actual net topology) to a dynamic mechanism based on frequent

exchanges of traffic statistics with gateways and other routing servers

throughout the network.


Thus, to get started, a node that wants to originate messages needs to

know one route:  a route that can be used to send a request to a routing

server to obtain other routes.  It would be possible, though poor

                                   11


practice, to embed this "route to the nearest routing server" in the

software of every node; a more general and flexible approach would be

for a newly-arrived node to use either a broadcast or a breath-of-life

strategy to discover this one route.  In the broadcast strategy, a node

broadcasts on its local transport network a request for the "route to

the nearest routing server".  For this particular broadcast route

request, at least one gateway on every subnetwork is prepared to act as

a rudimentary routing server.  In the breath-of-life strategy each

gateway periodically (say once every ten seconds) broadcasts over its

local subnetwork a packet containing the route to the nearest routing

server. A newly-operating node waits for the next breath-of-life packet

before it can request its first route.


Having found a route to a target node, if that node carries on more than

one activity it may be necessary to hold a further negotiation with the

target to learn how the target wants the source to identify the

particular activity in which it is interested at the target.  This

negotiation probably takes place by sending a rendezvous packet to the

host and receiving in return a packet that contains some extra routing

steps to be appended to the route originally obtained from the routing

server.  (Note that this protocol step is just the source-routing

variation on a negotiation that takes place in every such protocol; it

is not an extra step introduced by source routing.)


Separation of Routing and Naming


The main difference between source routing and its alternatives is that

the responsibilities both of route choice and of name resolution are

moved from the internet gateways to some other agent.  In turn, this

                                   12


responsibility change allows the internet transport protocol to be

defined and the gateways to be implemented without freezing a particular

form of network-wide naming.  A commitment to a particular form of

network-wide name is made in the design of the name resolution part of a

routing server, and since it doesn't matter to a gateway where a route

comes from (the gateway cares only that the next step works,) there can

be more than one kind of name resolution going on at the same time,

perhaps implemented by different routing servers.  Practically, one

would expect that there might be one centrally administered and

widely-used naming method implemented by standard routing servers, and

in addition some experimental or special-purpose routing servers

developed for special applications or to experiment, for example, with

interactive resolution of catalogued servicer names, or multi-casting

protocols.  These latter ideas, while likely interest for the future,

seem inappropriate to embed now in the internet transport protocol layer

on grounds of inexperience. But they can be tried in the environment of

a source-routing internet transport strategy without disruption and

without change to the gateways.  It is even possible for one routing

server to have a different view of the extent of the network from

others. Overlapping virtual networks are thus implementable with this

strategy.  This feature might be used, for example, to segregate "local"

communication paths from "long-distance" paths that involve routes

through external trifled networks.


At the same time, the source route field format places little constraint

on the format of the local transport addresses for any particular

subnetwork--only that there be an integral number of bytes whose number

is known by the gateway that moves the packet to the subnetwork.  This

                                   13


flexibility means that paths can go almost anywhere:  in particular they

can transverse "outside" networks no matter what their addressing or

internal routing strategy, so long as at the far end of the outside

network is a gateway that understands how to continue the packet on its

journey.


Separation of the mechanics of routing from the functions implemented by

a naming or addressing system has the advantage or clarifying some

frequent protocol design arguments that boil down to how much naming

function should be embedded in the lowest protocol layers.  For example,

it is usually proposed that an extra field, for use within the target

node, be carried along as a part of the internet address.  This field is

known as a "link" field in the ARPANET, the "channel" in X.25, and the

"socket" in ARPA's Internet for TCP and in the internet layer of the

Xerox PUP.  The argument develops over how big this field should

be--just large enough to distinguish among the activities or connections

a host carries on at one time, or generously large enough to distinguish

among all activities or connections the host will ever carry on. The

former choice takes the view that the field in question is merely the

last step in a route, the latter choice makes the socket number a unique

identifier, which is handling a naming function for the host, perhaps

allowing it to distinguish old connections from current ones.


The source routing strategy finesses this argument in that it allows the

design of the packet format at the level of the internet transport layer

address to be frozen without forcing a decision about socket number

size.  As many bytes of route as the target host needs to distinguish

among its current connections can be included as part of the source

                                   14


route and learned as part of the initial negotiation with the target

host using a well-known route to its negotiator.  A unique identifier

for a connection can be returned as part of that negotiation, and it can

be included in a connection identifier field of the next higher level of

protocol, to insure that packets arriving over a route are part of a

current connection.


Gateway Simplicity and Network Maintenance


With the source routing scheme just described, a gateway makes no

decisions (possibly it should check to insure that the route byte count

hasn't been exceeded) and it remembers nothing after the packet goes by.

This simplicity of operation and lack of memory means that one can in

principle implement such a gateway with a small amount of random logic

and a pair of packet buffers interconnecting two local network hardware

interfaces.  Such an implementation, since it does not involve a stored

program, has an exceptionally simple recovery strategy:  a hardware

reset to a standard starting state will always suffice.  In practice, at

least a microprocessor would probably be used to collect statistics and

respond to trouble diagnosis requests, but the basic principle that

recovery is trivial remains intact.


There is one way in which a source-routing gateway is more complex than

its hop-by-hop counterpart.  Every packet that arrives may have a

different source route size and different next step offset, so a small

amount of lookup is needed to perform the forwarding operation.  A

related consequence is that higher-level protocols find that their

headers don't always start in the same position within the packet.

                                   15


To create a gateway that can sustain a through transmission rate

comparable to that of the subnetworks involved requires careful

budgeting of the machine cycles involved.  For example, a bandwidth of 8

Mbits/sec. requires being able to pass 1000 1000-byte packets/second,

leaving a time budget of 1 ms. per packet.  If a 0.5 MIPS processor is

used for the gateway, there must be fewer than 500 instructions executed

for each packet, with the implication that whatever routing scheme is

used, it must be extremely simple.  The source routing approach makes

meeting this budget a realistic possibility.


Maintenance is directly aided by having such a simple gateway mechanism.

With little to go wrong, failures should be relatively rare and

diagnosis and repair should be straightforward.  Even in the case where

a gateway is actually implemented by software in a node attached to two

local transport networks, the simplicity of action required of a gateway

are few, and that therefore the program is not only likely to be

trouble-free but also it is acceptable to embed it in the innermost part

of the supervisor, where it is less likely to fail because of

interference by other programs in the same node.  Perhaps even more

important in the case of a software gateway, the simplicity of the

source-routing approach means that the software required can be quick to

implement.


Route Control


One of the more interesting opportunities that arises when source

routing is used is that the node that is the source of a message can, if

appropriate, control precisely the route through the internet that

                                   16


outgoing packets follow.  This control can be applied to solve several

problems, as follows:


a)   Trouble location.  If trouble develops in a network gateway, it

     will be noticed first as failure of packets routed through that

     gateway to arrive at their destination.  Starting at any node that

     notices such a problem, one can route a test packet "out and back",

     through some set of gateways and back to the originating node.  A

     series of such tests, tracing successive steps in the route that

     failed, should quickly locate the troublesome gateway.  One can

     also imagine extending this idea to route a message into a target

     node and back out again, as a check on the operation of the lower

     levels of that node's operating system.  An interesting aspect of

     this approach to trouble location is that any user, if sufficiently

     desperate, can undertake network diagnosis; trouble location is not

     restricted to a network maintenance center that has some particular

     address or special hardware.


b)   Policy implementation:  Some local networks may be paid for by a

     supporting organization that wants to have a say in their usage

     policy.  (For example, use of the ARPA network is supposed to be

     restricted to government-sponsored business.)  If such a network

     has gateways to two other networks, it could be used as an

     intermediate transport link on some packets flowing between those

     networks.  If source routing is used, the node that originates a

     packet can control whether the packet is routed through the network

     in question or, alternatively, avoids that network.  (Obviously,

                                   17


     sophisticated help from routing servers is needed to actually

     implement such a policy, but the opportunity is there.)


c)   Class-of-Service Implementation.  There are a variety of properties

     that an internet connection can have, and that may be different on

     different routes:  error rate, transport delay, probability of

     wiretapping, bandwidth.  Again, assuming considerable knowledge on

     the part of a routing server, with source routing one can choose a

     route that has class-of-service properties that are tailored to the

     application.


d)   FIFO Streams.  Assuming that all gateways along a given route relay

     packets in the same order that they are received, if the same

     source route is used on several packets, those packets will arrive

     at their target in the same order that they left the source,

     eliminating any need for the target to restore order in what is

     intended to be a FIFO stream.  In a hop-by-hop dynamic routing

     system, FIFO delivery cannot be easily insured, so the source and

     target must work harder if that is the function they require.


Finally, in an inter-network environment that includes both public and

private gateways, the precise route control provided by source routing

seems to be a key to effective use; private gateways can be used by

their owners while being ignored by everyone else; flaky gateways can be

bypassed by wary users no matter what administration is responsible for

them.

                                   18


Other Observations


There are a variety of other observations that one can make about source

routes.  These are, in no particular order:


1)   Source routing avoids several problems that can accompany more

     dynamic, highly optimal routing schemes.  There is no danger of

     packets circulating in a loop forever, so techniques such as hop

     counts are not needed.  There is little concern for startup

     transients, stability, or oscillation in the dynamics of route

     selection.  Extra traffic to exchange traffic statistics among

     gateways is not involved, and one does not have to worry about the

     interaction between the reliability of that traffic and the

     stability of the network.  There is no requirement that each

     gateway maintain a table that has a number of entries proportional

     to the size of the network.


2)   Development of network software for a new node can take an

     important shortcut by assembling hand-constructed routes at first.

     As long as the network topology does not change faster than the

     software gets debugged, this technique can be used to get a

     primitive connection operational without the need to program a

     routing server protocol.  For quick debugging of a new

     microprocessor this ease of programming the first network

     connection would be quite useful.


3)   For certain very simple applications (e.g., trouble logging, of

     data collection) one could imagine leaving them permanently in

     place with a fixed, hand-selected route to their target. (Such an

                                   19


     approach would have to be weighed carefully against the disruption

     that a change in network topology might cause. The point is that

     this opportunity to exploit source routing for simple applications

     does exist.)


4)   Source is consistent with at least two proposed

     fragmentation/reassembly strategies.  Fragmentation can be done by

     a gateway on entry to a subnetwork that has a small maximum packet

     reassembly can be accomplished either at the gateway leaving that

     subnetwork or by the target node.  Fragmentation can also be done

     by a fragmentation server, which might be a node whose address

     appears "in the middle" of a route unbeknownst to the source,

     target, or intervening gateways.  If it receives a packet that it

     believes is too large to get through some intermediate subnetwork,

     it can fragment that packet and also reroute the fragments through

     a reassembly server on the other side of the bottleneck.  Finally,

     one might successfully finesse fragmentation completely by sending

     big packets over a longer or less desirable route that allows big

     packets, while sending small ones the short, desirable way.


5)   In a manner similar to the fragmentation/reassembly servers just

     described, one can place other specialized servers along a route to

     act as filters, translators, etc.  The idea has not been explored,

     but it seems to represent an interesting kind of opportunity.


6)   Attachment of multi-tailed hosts (the "multi-homing problem") is

     simplified.  In a complex internet installation, one might expect

     to find some hosts that have attachments to two or more different

     subnetworks of the internet, perhaps for added reliability or for

                                   20


     assured bandwidth to services found on different subnetworks.  If

     the several attachment points are functionally equivalent, then

     when another node tries to send a message to such a host, there is

     a question of to which one of the several attachment points the

     message should go.  A hop-by-hop routing scheme in which gateways

     interpret internet names would require that either the different

     attachment points be assigned different internet names (so the

     originator has the burden of choosing which internet name to use)

     or else a single internet name is used for all the attachment

     points of the multi-tailed host and the gateways add this

     topological fact to their storehouse of routing knowledge and make

     the choice on the fly.  With source routing, the burden of choice

     can move to the routing server, where the topological information

     is available to choose a route from the originator to the nearest

     attachment point of the multi-tailed host.  Neither the originator

     nor the internet gateways need realize that the target has several

     attachment points.


In this last case, as in some others, one can argue that some of the

apparent simplifications or advantages obtained by using source routing

are actually one shifts of the underlying problem over to the routing

server.  This argument has some validity, but it overlooks two points:


1)   Separation of two tangled problem areas, naming and routing, into

     two distinct and largely independent mechanisms simplifies and

     clarifies design, algorithms, and code.


2)   When one implements routing ad a service supplied by a server, it

     becomes possible to introduce variations on the service by changing

                                   21


     just the server, or providing an alternate server. When the

     function of routing is distributed among the gateways, changes in

     the service require changing all of the gateways, an undertaking

     that is more difficult and hazardous.


Conclusions


The premise of this note is that source routing is particularly

well-suited to the campus environment.  The argument goes as follows: in

the campus environment, one can install high bandwidth lines at low

cost, since reliance on common-carrier offerings is not required and

physical facilities are under common control.  This high bandwidth

permits using strategies, such as source routing, that may waste some

part of the communications capacity by not being optimal.  The campus

administrative environment calls for diversity in protocol, for which

source routing caters by providing a lowest campus-wide transport

protocol with a minimum amount of predetermined function that might

constrain higher level protocol choices.  The campus administrative

environment also calls for diversity in administration, for which source

routing caters by permitting precise control of complete routes for

particular messages, and multiple strategies for resolving service names

or network addresses, as required.  It also permits messages to flow

through an internetwork arrangement despite some of its topology not

being centrally planned.  Source routing allows particularly easy

trouble location and source routing gateways are exceptionally simple,

two properties that are important when one assumes a central

administration that must be cost-conscious or even under-funded. Thus,

from these arguments one can conclude that, at least for the campus-wide

                                   22


internetwork case, source routing is an attractive scheme well worth

considering.


Acknowledgements


This note records a series of intensive discussions with David Reed,

David Clark, Kenneth Pogran, and Noel Chiappa.  It also borrows ideas

and terminology from working papers of the ARPA internet project by Dan

Cohen, Jon Postel, David Clark, and John Shoch and from working papers

of the M.I.T. AI Laboratory Chaosnet project by David Moon.  Welcome

comments on early drafts were made by Dan Cohen and John Shoch.


References


[1]  Farber, D.J., and Vittal, J.J., "Extendability Considerations in

     the Design of the Distributed Computer System (DCS)," Proc. Nat.

     Telecomm. Conf., (November, 1973), Atlanta, Georgia, pp. 15E-1 to

     15E-6.


[2]  Sunshine, Carl A., "Source Routing in Computer Networks," Computer

     Communication Review 1;, 7, (January, 1977) pp. 29-33.

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