On 28 nov 2005, at 09.19, Florian Weimer wrote:
So AFAIK the state of the art routers does 40G line-rate deep-packet inspection with any pattern matching. So remind me again what the problem is?
40G line rate with small packets? Sounds neat. (n times 10G line rate with large packets on a signle router has been possible for quite some time now.)
Previous router generations couldn't process packets on the fast path as soon as they contained IP options (IPv4) or extension headers (IPv6). Has this really changed?
Not for previous version no...
(The whole issue may not be a real problem, it only shows that the claim that IPv6 has been designed for efficient forwarding is crap.)
Well...that argument goes both ways. You could also say that the hw vendors didn't follow the development as IPv6 was certainly defined when the current hw was designed. The real issue is the upgrade costs and how willing providers are to upgrade for _just_ ipv6 forwarding capacity. Probably not very as the revenue margin will stay the same. OTOH they will upgrade for faster line-rate over time anyway and the problem over time is non-existing. Personally I don't think v6 gives as much increased forwarding capacity as MPLS - none. OTOH there are v6 claims in the marketing and press that tends to make me more upset :-) The increased security is my favourite :-) - kurtis -