Imaginative Draft Fred Butcher - Sheepsco Systems 1st April 1998 Mike O'Deal - YewYewNet/Worldfarms Eric Sheepley - BAA Networks Sheep over Sonet Status of This Memo This document is an Imaginative-Draft. Imaginative-Drafts are working documents of the Imaginary Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Imaginative-Drafts. Imaginative-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Imaginative- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." To learn the current status of any Imaginative-Draft, please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Imaginative- Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). Distribution of this document is inadvisable but we will leave it up to you. Abstract Sheep are variable length animals with a tendency to wander aimlessly. Shepherd and dog protocols such Organising Sheep within a Particular Field and the Big Gate Protocol are normally applied to sheep to ensure that they reach their intended destinations in an efficient manner. Hedges are field independent forwarding elements with field specific interfaces which run the Shepherd and Dog protocols. Sheep over hedges is therefore a well known technique for the controlled forwarding of sheep within and between Farms. Existing techniques support the direct carriage of a variable length sheep over a field physical layer. This draft aims to extend this technique by the introduction of multiple encapsulation techniques. In particular, Sheep over Sonet is proposed as a particularly efficient technique for the carriage of sheep between hedges. 1.Introduction In Sheep over Hedges, a sheep is carried directly onto a field physical layer for the carriage between hedges. When a count is made at the ingress hedge of the number of sheep carried through the field in this manner, Sheep over Hedges becomes a particularly well known sleep inducing technique. This draft suggests the insertion of an intermediate encapsulation technique to enable sheep to be carried over a range of physical field technologies. Two major techniques are suggested, both of which are multi-meat in nature and can therefore be used to carry other animals through fields. The draft then goes on to introduce new sheep forwarding and service capabilities. 2. Sheep Over Sonet (SOS) Sheep over Sonet is a simple and efficient technique for the carriage of sheep over a range of physical field technologies. When the sheep is flung over the hedge, a simple header is appended to the sheep body at the egress of the hedge. No contention exists in the field and therefore all sheep which are encapsulated and launched into the field are guaranteed to arrive on the other side of the field. This non contention process was arrived at, after analysing opportunities for statistical field gain. However, such gain was always problematic due to the well-known Sonet over Hedge Hog problem... Support can also be provided for the support of channelisation of multiple flocks over the hedge and into the field. The sheep is first segmented into multiple variable length joints such as neck, shoulder, rib, chops, chuck, loin, leg, knuckle and hoof, before a channel specific header is appended. The joints are then launched into the field. Sheep/ joints which have been carried over excessive numbers of hedges will have their TTL decremented to zero and the resultant sheep will be treated as mutton. 3. Sheep over ATM (SHAM) Sheep over ATM is the other major technique in which a new advanced process is used to encapsulate the sheep body through the field. The sheep is first sliced into fixed sized cuts before a hedge specific id is stamped on the cut. Each cut is 48 bites long whilst the average sheep is about 1500 bites. During standardisation, there was much consternation over the choice of the cut size following extensive debate at butchers conferences worldwide such as the Advanced Treatment of Meat Federation. The conflict was between the US preference of 64 bites and the EU preference for 32 bites, the root of the conflict being the appetite of the respective average meat-eaters. Due to the mismatch between the fixed size cut and the user-friendly joints approach, it is difficult for even the most skilled butcher to recognise the type of meat being transported. At the other side of the field, the various animals / joints are reassembled at the next hedge. It is amusing to think that the original proponents of this technology actually saw it as a replacement for hedges themselves. They dreamt of huge fields spanning the globe, separated by low maintenance, high throughput gates. They dreamt of the elimination of sheep by force fed, laboratory grown, regulation sized 48 bit size lambs. These cuts would have been sent in this state over multiple hedges until the final hedge is crossed and the lambs reassembled into a flock. Note that major researchers in the field are now questioning the wisdom of this encapsulation technique for a number of reasons. They forgot about the power of the environmental lobby, and the end produces and users who loved the flexibility and diversity of animals, catering to different tastes and producing useful by-products such as fertiliser, wool and glue. Firstly, the sheep Slicing And Reassembly (SAR) process is believed to be expensive in terms of knives and butchers fingers. Secondly, the insertion of a hedge_id per cut, results in a loss of fieldwidth and it is an implementation issue as to whether the sheep's head is dropped or an extra 30% fieldwidth is acquired. Secondly, whilst SHAM can ensure that the right amount of meat is delivered to the right location at a specific time, the SHAM cuts are meat independent and it is therefore very difficult to detect particular animal exports nor prioritise between different chops or animals during transportation through the field. As a result, French farmers are particularly livid at not being able to distinguish English lamb and the Germans cannot effectively ban BSE infected British Beef. Field providers cannot differentially charge for chops with respect to hooves, nor for live over dead animals, or even Aberdeen Angus over retired sheepdog. In addition, rogue suppliers can deliver mutton dressed as lamb. This is all possible with the use of a hedge as the original animal is seen as it passes over the hedge. Finally, Mice, which are only one bite big, are a particularly popular pet / snack in many countries and are increasingly being sent over hedges. Carrying a large number of mice over a SHAM equipped hedge results in the loss of 47 bites of fieldwidth which makes the efficiency of this technique critically dependent on the proportion of Mice and other small animals being carried. 4. Sheep Service Evolution 4.1. Next Hedge Routing Protocol In a sequence of multiple hedges, the opportunity exists to employ the services of a new shepherd and dog protocol to ensure that the sheep avoid intermediate hedges and are instead stuffed under hedges in their chopped form. NHRP is a layer 3 protocol for identifying the exit hedge gate on the route to the slaughter house. NHRP signalling is carried on the back of the sheep in the form of a coloured brand. The infliction of the brand on the sheep is known to be a particularly painful process for the sheep. The NHRP protocol has been shown to allow the occasional stray sheep to exit the farm improperly. In addition, the avoidance of the jump over intermediate hedges compromises the effectiveness of the sleep inducing properties of the process because no sheep are seen to come over each hedge. 4.2. Sheep Multicasting Services Recent scientific advances have now made it possible to build dynamic, multi-point to multi-point tree and hedge topologies to enable the copying and merging of sheep. The copying, or cloning technique, occurs by equipping the top of the hedge with a biotechnology lab supported by stacks of venture capital. As the multicast sheep comes over the hedge, the DNA is extracted and used to grow an exact copy of the sheep. This cloning process has been demonstrated in controlled conditions but doubts remain as to it's commercial viability due to both 'ethical' concerns and the impact on sheep forwarding speed at the hedge. The amount of copying depends on the number of downwind receivers which is known at the hedge through the use of Improbable Sheep Multicast Protocol. Each farmer selects one hedge as it's Multicast Designated Hedge (MDH). He does so by whistling on a regular basis causing the dog to run to the MDH and invoke the DNA extraction process (no mean feat for existing dogs). There must only be one whistler per field else the dog gets very confused leading to the well known 'barking up the wrong tree' problem. In the merging process, sheep from different incoming fields, with the same topologically independent flock address, are shuffled into the same field in an orderly manner. This enables collaborating farms, known as cooperatives, to satisfy a continuous demand for lamb for example. It is interesting to note that the SHAM technique can interfere with this process due to the lack of a unique source animal indication. This means that cuts of meat from different animals can be accidentally recombined at the far end resulting in gruesome zoological specimens. Work is ongoing to define additional cut markings to remove this possibility but this leads to further loss of effective field width. 4.3. Slaughterhouse Mobility Slaughterhouses have traditionally been fixed establishments. However, with increasingly bizarre regulations being imposed by beaurocrats, slaughterhouse owners are now hitting the road in an attempt to respond quickly to regulatory changes by upping and moving to the cheapest slaughter zones. However, once the slaughterhouse has moved, any sheep in transit to the slaughterhouse can get lost. This is being solved by the slaughter houses digging expensive tunnels between the old and new locations so that customs authorities do not see the illicit sheep transfers. Unfortunately, this diverse sheep routing results in a long journey which leaves the sheep tired and wasted. An enhancement enables the sheep entering the tunnel to tell the sheep dog to run back to the farm with the new slaughter house location so that all remaining sheep leave the farm with the correct slaughter house location. 5. Security considerations Security is an important element of the slaughter mobility process because criminals could try to redirect the tunnel, intercepting the dog or by using brute force and a van. These attacks can be used to get sheep to be forwarded to the criminals fields and slaughterhouses. This is known as the rustling attack. Secondly, it is imperative that no-one in the IETF tell our bosses that we have submitted this draft. 6. Disclaimer The events and people depicted in this draft are purely fictitious and any resemblance to real life or technical reality is purely accidental as befits the work of the IETF.