--- title: Must Read: Routing Will Never Be a Solved Problem «... description: A pointer to Mark Seery's essay arguing that routing is fundamentally unsolvable, followed by a substantive comment thread debating the core reasons. Key... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/must-read-routing-will-never-be-a-solved-problem-ipspace-net-blog-egfedi4lr twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Must Read: Routing Will Never Be a Solved Problem « ipSpace.net blog | daily.dev og:description: A pointer to Mark Seery's essay arguing that routing is fundamentally unsolvable, followed by a substantive comment thread debating the core reasons. Key... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/must-read-routing-will-never-be-a-solved-problem-ipspace-net-blog-egfedi4lr og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/EgFEDi4LR.png og:image:alt: Must Read: Routing Will Never Be a Solved Problem « ipSpace.net blog og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Must Read: Routing Will Never Be a Solved Problem « ipSpace.net blog **[ipSpace.net Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/ipspace)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A pointer to Mark Seery's essay arguing that routing is fundamentally unsolvable, followed by a substantive comment thread debating the core reasons. Key unresolved routing challenges discussed include site and host multi-homing, easy renumbering with persistent connections, mobility, identifier/locator separation, BGP route trustworthiness, and the inherent tension between route summarization for scalability and optimal routing. The comments note that many of these problems were known 25–30 years ago and that real progress has been limited, with IPv6 seen as a missed opportunity to address them architecturally. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why is network routing considered an unsolved problem despite decades of development? Routing remains unsolved because of fundamental trade-offs that cannot be eliminated: summarization is required for scalability in large networks (10k+ routers in a single IGP domain), but summarization inherently loses information needed for optimal routing. Additional unresolved challenges include site and host multi-homing, easy renumbering with persistent connections, mobility, BGP route trustworthiness, and the lack of true identifier/locator separation built into layer-3 addressing. _Network engineers wrestling with these architectural limits share findings and debate approaches on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The world in which IPv6 was a good design](https://daily.dev/posts/the-world-in-which-ipv6-was-a-good-design-tj3i8ov0s) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [misc/why6why.md at main · becarpenter/misc](https://daily.dev/posts/misc-why6why-md-at-main-becarpenter-misc-vdnnmpiyy) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Never-Ending IPv6 Loopback Prefix Saga « ipSpace.net blog](https://daily.dev/posts/the-never-ending-ipv6-loopback-prefix-saga-ipspace-net-blog-4nlhgh10l) · ipSpace.net Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [BGP-Free Network Core with SRv6 « ipSpace.net blog](https://daily.dev/posts/bgp-free-network-core-with-srv6-ipspace-net-blog-9bbn88wub) · ipSpace.net Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#networking](https://daily.dev/tags/networking), [#bgp](https://daily.dev/tags/bgp) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/must-read-routing-will-never-be-a-solved-problem-ipspace-net-blog-egfedi4lr) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Must Read: Routing Will Never Be a Solved Problem « ipSpace.net blog","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/must-read-routing-will-never-be-a-solved-problem-ipspace-net-blog-egfedi4lr","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/must-read-routing-will-never-be-a-solved-problem-ipspace-net-blog-egfedi4lr"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:54:52.481Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:28:12.362Z","description":"A pointer to Mark Seery's essay arguing that routing is fundamentally unsolvable, followed by a substantive comment thread debating the core reasons. 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