[e2e] a means to an end

[Ali Ghodsi]

Jon Crowcroft wrote:
> It is unusual kind of service for the internet community as it isnt an overlay, 
> it has to work inside the IP layer
> as it is something end systems and routers need to share state/fate with,
> (we hit this before implicity with multicast,  and couldn't ever face up to it properly)
>   
This would preclude overlays, and in particular DHTs, because they're 
app level (aside from ROFL, VRR and variants).

One of my favourite DHT papers is SkipNet by MS, which a lot of people 
seem to have forgotten (not so cited anymore). They guarantee fate 
sharing, even though it is an overlay.

I'll quickly recap the main idea for those who don't want to read it. It 
is a DHT a'la Chord, but nodes on the ring are lexicographically sorted 
(in reverse, e.g. se.sics at ali). Hence, nodes in the same AS would occupy 
the same region of the ring. Hence, a partition would leave each 
component of the partition fully functioning. SkipNet has some other 
additional features, e.g. a) nodes don't need to be balanced on the 
ring, and b) if you look for a piece of data within your AS you never 
route outside of it, which is also good for transit costs. (I don't 
remember the paper talking about AS:es and transit/peering links, but 
it's essentially there).

So maybe we could use that?

Regards,
Ali