linuxmafia.com 2016/linuxmafia.com.tar/linuxmafia.com/pub/humour/sheep-over-sonet

Text File | 2002-11-09 | 12KB | 219 lines

Imaginative Draft                           Fred Butcher - Sheepsco Systems
1st April 1998                           Mike O'Deal - YewYewNet/Worldfarms
                                               Eric Sheepley - BAA Networks


                              Sheep over Sonet
                          <draft-ietf-afd-sos-00.txt>


Status of This Memo

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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.