when last we saw our hero (Monday, Jul 22, 2002), 
 Mike Horwath was madly tapping out:
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2002 at 06:15:42PM -0500, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom
> wrote:
> > help me understand what you're saying: what did you have in mind,
> > that we need public IP addresses for? certainly there are plenty
> > of uses for them; but we may be in something of a
> > bandwidth-constrained situation fairly quickly, and so servers/IP
> > phones may have their functionality curtailed severely if they're
> > depending on wireless and don't have a landline to provide
> > (sort-of-guaranteed) bandwidth.
> 
> Cache servers rule.
> 
> You can save a TON of bandwidth that way.
> 
> Also, throwing local content onto the network instead of heading out
> for it will make a big difference.
> 
> Peering with people can help there immensely.
> 
> > I've also heard this sort of scheme discussed as a way to do
> > roaming wireless... you have a static IP address on your device,
> > and whenever you get handed off to a new access point, that AP
> > just routes the traffic back across the network (using BGP or
> > whatever to find the route) to whatever the former gateway was.
> > Was it Spencer who brought that idea up?
> 
> Valid idea, requires real access points with real routers
> in-between.
> 
> Of course, BGP would be overkill, but the thought is valid.

it's called mobile ip and there aren't a whole lot of clients for
it and there is still the need for home gateways.  fortunately there
are clients for linux and *bsd.  i'm not sure what the status of this
support is for windows and mac os *.  last i heard microsoft had
released a beta mobile ip client for windows nt.  i'm not sure what
the current state of this is.

it might bear reviewing if folks would like the functionality.
although it must be pointed out that this would further burden the
network since the tunneling mechanisms used would be shuffling packets
around suboptimally. in a situation where b/w is at a premium this
might not be an acceptable solution. 



-- 
steve ulrich                       sulrich at botwerks.org
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