Routing without tears; Bridging without danger

Google Tech Talks April, 24 2008 ABSTRACT Why is route calculation done at both layers 2 and 3 of networking? Is one better? Do we need both? This talk explains the historical accident by which bridging was conceived and the properties that make it attractive, as well as dangerous, today. The talk discusses new work being done in IETF known as TRILL (TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links), which combines the advantages of bridges (layer 2 forwarding devices) and routers (layer 3 forwarding devices). Although the basic idea is fairly simple, certain properties of bridges, such as their ability to create partitioned VLANs on a layer 2 cloud, make the design challenging. Speaker: Radia Perlman Dr. Radia Perlman is a Fellow at Sun Microsystems, working on network and security protocols. She invented many of the basic algorithms that make today's network infrastructure robust and scalable. Her current research interests include assured delete, making large networks robust against Byzantine failures, and replacing bridges/switch with technology which is upwardly compatible, but more robust, flexible, and scalable. She is author of "Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols", and coauthor of "Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World", which are widely used both as textbooks in universities and for engineers to learn the field. She holds over 90 patents, a PhD in computer science from MIT, and an honorary doctorate from KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. She recently was given a lifetime achievement award by Usenix, and named SVIPLA (Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association) Inventor of the year.