Donald,
(Maybe this helps: I’m not actually sure why in a k-element set you order
them based <something> mod k because that would seem to produce likely
duplicates. Since your backup option in the case of duplicates is proper
numeric sort, why just not do that and only that? E.g. "RBridges are sorted
in byte string ascending order by their LAALP IDs, or if they are equal, by
their System IDs considered as unsigned integers.” But it could also be that
it is too early and I have not yet had enough Diet Coke…)
I believe the idea is to quasi-randomize the order. The DF election is
per VLAN and a goal is to spread the multicast traffic across the
RBridges in the active-active edge group.
It is a fine goal to randomise the order.
My only observation of the current setup is that if you randomise a
k-element group through "mod k” operation, you will likely have
some number of collisions in the result. I don’t know enough
about math to calculate the percentage. But for the sake of
argument, if k=2 it seems that the likelihood of collision is 50%.
And for every collision, your order becomes no longer random
but simply numerical order of the identifiers. In our degenerate
k=2 example it seems that in 50% of the cases you have a random
order and 50% of the cases you have numerical order. I’m sure
there would be other ways to randomise the order with less
collisions, if avoiding numerical order is important.
Jari
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