The Internet *FAILED* in 1994. The number of prefixes carried globally exceeded the ability of the global routing system to carry it, and as a result, some parts of the world deliberately summarized away whole large-scale ISPs merely to survive. The Internet *FAILED* again in 1996, when the dynamicism in the global routing system exceeded the ability of many border routers to handle, and as a result, some networks (not just core ones) deliberately made the Internet less quick to adjust to changes in topology. Thus, the routing system FAILED twice: once because of memory, once because of processor power. If the size or the dynamicism of the global routing system grows for a sustained period faster than the price/performance curve of EITHER memory OR processing power, the Internet will FAIL again. I do mean the Internet, and not just some pieces of it. The old saw, "the Internet detects damage and routes around it" simply isn't true, when your routing system isn't working. It was unpleasant both times. Three continents were effectively isolated from one another for a couple of days while organizing a response to the memory crisis. Three of the largest ISPs at the time were crippled on and off for days during the processing power crisis, and even when mechanisms were brought into place, relatively unimportant bugs destabilized the entire Internet from time to time. Note that the processor power issue is the one that has been scariest, since it has had small-scale failures fairly regularly. Things like selective packet drop *exist* because of the price/performance curve and engineering gap for deploying and USING more processing power. So, Moore's Law, or more specifically the underlying curve which tracks the growth of useful computational power, is exactly what we should compare with the global routing system's growth curve. Note that when Moore is doing better than the Internet, it allows for either cheaper supply of dynamic connectivity, or it allows for the deployment of more complex handling of the global NLRI. The major problem, as you have pointed out, is that processing requirement is often bursty, such as when everyone is trying to do a dynamic recovery from a router crash or major line fault. We could still use 68030s in our core routers, it's just that it'd take alot longer than it used to perform a global partition repair, which means your TCP sessions or your patience will probably time out alot more frequently. | I think that what we need to do is have a fourth group, call them Internet | Engineers for lack of a better word, come in and determine what the sign | should read. Structures built according to best known engineering practices still fall down from time to time. That's the problem in anticipating unforeseen failures. Consider yourself lucky that you haven't had to experience a multi-day degredation (or complete failure!) of service due to resource constraints. And that you haven't run into a sign that says: "please note: if you try to have an automatic partition repair in the event this path towards {AS SET} fails, your local routing system will destabilize". | Finally, we have a sixth group, call them the IETF, come in | and invent a flying car that doesn't need the bridge at all. As Randy (with his IETF hat) says: "send code". Sean.