"Faster BGP" and "Handling 250k routes" is not just a function of CPU speed and memory capacity. You have to consider network topology, latency/packetloss, router software (as well as hardware, so you can throw in your CPU and hardware here), peering patterns, route filtering, IGP/iBGP behaviour and some liberal application of fairy dust.
Just to clarify, I wasn't speaking so much in terms of actually making BGP faster, as in terms of route policy management, which was an issue brought up earlier in this thread. So, I wasn't suggesting that "doubling the number of routes in a network might not bring up new issues", my argument was more along the lines of "if you can keep track of policies for 10K routes, you can probably keep track of policies for 20K or 200K routes". Which of course is not to say that your router can nessecarily handle 200K pieces of policy data, although I would think that _is_ more of a hardware/software issue than a protocol/network-behavior issue. If the emerging network topologies and route-informaton volumes are bringing out non-performance limitations in our routing protocols, then obviously we need new protocols, and certainly there have been a number of links to papers on different routing schemes posted in the last week. Really, the core of what I was saying was, "instead of complaining about the headaches rapid growth causes us and trying to change user behavior, let's really focus our efforts on solving the underlying problems". I am not trying to start a fight here -- I believe the majority of posts so far on this topic have been in exactly the spirit of working together for a better solution. I just hope that the final solution takes into account the actual needs of different types of companies and individuals on the internet, rather than being purely based upon what is easiest for backbones providers.