Subject: zc protocol scalability

From: "Hattig, Myron" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 12:37:29 -0700

Just trying to update the zc requirements draft from the meeting in
Adelaide. Someone requested that scalability requirements be placed up from
in the document and others agreed. Please comment on the following text I am
proposing becomes section 1.3.4 in the req. doc.

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1.3.4	Scalability

Scalability is not of great concern for zeroconf protocols because it is
more likely that a zeroconf protocol will transition to a non-zeroconf
protocol before scalability becomes an issue. For this reason, this document
mentions little of scalability requirements.

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-myron

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From: Rajesh Krishnan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 16:49:20 -0400 (EDT)

The scalability statement almost suggests that ZC and scalability are 
incompatible concepts.  I would like to think that distributed automatic
configuration is called for when a system gets too large/complex for 
manual configuration and not the other way around.  

Although small systems may be anomalous in this respect of scalability, 
we need to consider that software and networking systems have a curious 
way of growing beyond the original intent almost like bureaucracies do.  
20KLOC+ scripts happen already, and 10K node ZC networks might as well. :)

Fundamentally the scalability of ZC protocols will be limited by the 
scalability of known distributed, on-line (when applicable) algorithms 
(implementations) for solving the problems that underly ZC.   

Outlining specific aspects of scalability of each ZC problem component 
in terms of computational complexity will be helpful here.  Perhaps 
messaging complexity (eg., distributed consensus, distributed state 
maintenance) concerns ZC the most. 

-Rajesh