Subject: RE: Question on prunes?

From: "Jung, Michael" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 11:44:41 -0500

><SNIP>
>The reason for prune information to be forgotten is so that it can go
>away when a source stops transmitting.  If prunes are permanent, and
>a source sends a single packet to a group to which no one is listening,
>the whole network will get prune state instantiated.  Now the sender
>sends no more packets, ever.  Now what?  If prunes don't time out, the
>prune state will last forever in the network, taking up memory space
>in routers, even though it's not needed any more.
>
>What was the reasoning behind the prune lifetime of ~(3) 
>three minutes?
>
>--mikej

---

From: Bill Fenner <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 09:56:20 PST

>What was the reasoning behind the prune lifetime of ~(3) 

The suggested prune lifetime in the current DVMRP Internet Draft is 2 hours.
mrouted 3.0's prune lifetime was 5 minutes so that bugs would not adversely
affect traffic reception for too long, and then it was forgotten about until
after the mrouted 3.8 release.

  Bill