[Babel-users] [IETF I-D Submission Tool] New Version Notification for draft-chroboczek-babel-routing-protocol-05

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

>>>> No version of Babel has ever been fully loop-free in networks with
>>>> more complex topologies

> Maybe there is a way to fix this? Or is it simply because of some bug
> (as opposed to some mathematical property)?

As you can imagine, I've spent a long time staring at the issue, and
haven't found a good solution.  While I'm unable to prove it, I'm
starting to think that there's a law of nature behind it somewhere; it
looks like something needs to give somewhere:

  - EIGRP performs a global synchronisation, which is problematic in
    wireless networks (google for EIGRP SIA);
  - BGP has more or less the same properties as Babel (it's actually
    a little bit weaker, if I'm not mistaken; google for BGP fast-reroute);
  - BATMAN works around the problem by using tunnelling, which has its
    own issues, and by delaying reconvergence as much as reasonable,
    which has another set of issues.

> when I have a long sunday with a free head for thinking or when we
> meet for a beer in Paris ;-)

Yeah, I've been trying to convince the owner of my favourite bar to
install a blackboard.

                                        Juliusz