On another list, we're discussing whether small ISPs should be able to obtain globally routable /19s. A well respected member of the NANOG community has suggested that "routers would fall over" if the /19s were granted. As you know, Tony Bates publishes the weekly CIDR report; therein he makes the following comment: "This lists the "Top 30" players who if they decided to aggregate their announced classful prefixes at the origin AS level could make a significant difference in the reduction of the current size of the Internet routing table. This calculation does not take into account the inclusion of holes when forming an aggregate so it is possible even larger reduction should be possible." Today's data indicates 2,791 router slots are involved in the "Top 30". Could these router slots really be made available as Tony suggests? If not, why not? Thank you for your time and for your responses. If you will, respond to pagans@texoma.net also. If you prefer to remain off the record, reply privately with *OFF THE RECORD* in your subject line. Here's today's data as published at <http://www.employees.org/~tbates/cidr-report.html#General_Status>: --- 04Jul97 --- ASnum NetsNow NetsCIDR NetGain % Gain Description AS174 1148 819 329 28.7% Performance Systems International AS2493 766 460 306 39.9% i*internet AS3602 556 309 247 44.4% Sprint Canada Inc. AS2048 251 120 131 52.2% LANET-1 AS1691 301 172 129 42.9% BCTEL AS6541 186 59 127 68.3% GTE Intelligent Network Services AS3804 248 135 113 45.6% Bell Solutions AS1 1032 922 110 10.7% BBNPLANET AS1967 186 82 104 55.9% Middle East Technical University AS839 125 26 99 79.2% North West Territories Regional N AS701 972 875 97 10.0% Alternet AS7195 121 43 78 64.5% INTERRED AS816 318 248 70 22.0% UUNET Canada (ASN-UUNETCA-AS4) AS2704 256 186 70 27.3% HOOKUP-NET-A AS4293 108 44 64 59.3% IMCI AS549 250 189 61 24.4% ONet Backbone AS5668 72 13 59 81.9% Century Telephone Inc. AS4648 190 134 56 29.5% NZIX 2 AS3561 942 890 52 5.5% MCI AS6181 53 4 49 92.5% FUSE-NET AS3799 74 26 48 64.9% IDS AS97 175 128 47 26.9% JvNCnet AS813 208 161 47 22.6% UUNET Canada (ASN-UUNETCA-AS1) AS719 565 518 47 8.3% LANLINK autonomous system AS4454 74 27 47 63.5% TNET-AS AS4763 100 56 44 44.0% Telstra New Zealand AS2711 98 57 41 41.8% SUNBELT-AS AS271 98 57 41 41.8% BCnet Backbone AS3749 75 35 40 53.3% TECNET AS225 63 25 38 60.3% VIRGINIA-AS ---- 2791