......... Yakov Rekhter is rumored to have said: ] ] So, perhaps we should just look at the total amount of IP address space ] advertised by a provider in its routing advertisements, then divide ] this amount by the number of routes the provider advertises, and ] see whether the resulting number meets the goal. ] But what is the goal? I thought about your jottings all weekend Yakov. I'm sure it will comfort you to know I thought of you over the weekend :) My opinion is that the Internet became a classic chaos model directly after the transition from a single NFSNET backbone to the NAP model we now live with. At this point in time we are debating and proposing the methods by which we will impose laws on this system. As one studies chaotic models, one often finds that natural laws tend to impose possible goals called 'attractor points'. I believe our goal for 'attractor points' would be that people have a respectable ratio of networks announced to host space claimed. However, I haven't the foggiest how to define this goal. Do we factor in the amount of address space a person has? Should this be a factor? But how do we factor in percentage usage, and future growth? These are the questions that have been kicked around always. My capitalist nature says that the amount of address space one has should not be an issue. I'm not terribly sure on how that enters into the metric. I'd be in favor of something that directly associated 'goodness' or 'cost' with the amount of ip nodes one could route, or the ratio of routes to nodes. I attempted to do some work on this, and basically came to no conclusion. Perhaps my futility will spawn some other, more intelligent thought. First, I took the radb from ftp.ra.net:/routing.arbiter/radb/dbase/radb.db.gz and parsed it into a database that looks like this: AS Origin:Number of Routes:Address Space (ie #of ip nodes):nodes/routes I then started using 'gnuplot' to compare fields to fields, looking for some order in the chaos. Surprisingly, I found none. If you're interested in the databse, it's available from ftp://ftp.mid.net/pub/noc/wacky.routing.database. It may be that I hosed my math up in some of the places, because some of my numbers look kind of wacky. So, here are a few of the graphs, in hope that someone might comment on them, or gain some sort of insight..... Here I plotted the number of routes vs the metric Yakov mentioned, hoping to see some sort of a 'sampling' of where we are. However, we don't really... Or do we? nodes/route 100000 ++-----------+-------------+------------+-------------+-----------++ + + A + + + + 80000 A+ routes vs nodes/route A ++ AA A | 60000 A+ A ++ 40000 A+ A ++ AAA | 20000 AAA A A ++ AAAAA AA A A + A A + A +A + 0 AAAAAA-A-A-A-+--A----------+----------A-+-------------+-----------++ 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 routes Well, we seem to see some sort of correlation where the more routes a person has, the lower their metric becomes where metric = hostspace/routes. Interestingly, I found that the older an AS, the more routes they had. Big surprise there.... :-). Number of Routes 1000 ++--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+-----++ + + + + + + + | 800 ++ A AS# vs # of Routes A ++ | | 600 +A A ++ 400 ++ A A ++ AA A A | 200 AAAA A A A AA ++ AAAA A A +AAA AAAAA AAA AA+ AAAAAA A+ A + + | 0 AAAAAAAAA-+AAA-A-AAAAA-AAAAAAA+AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--AAA--------+-----A+ 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 AS # And finally, I found that the older an AS number, in general, the more IP space they had, at least to some degree: Address Space 1e+07 ++--------+--------+---------+--------+---------+--------+--------++ + + + + + + + + 8e+06 ++ A AS# vs Address Space A ++ | | 6e+06 ++ ++ 4e+06 A+ A A A ++ |A A A | 2e+06 +A A A AA A A A ++ +AAA A A + A AAA A AA AA+ A A A + + + + 0 AAAAAAAAA-+AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--AA--------+-----A--++ 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 AS # Well, perhaps these were interesting, perhaps not. Perhaps they'll help people think of a brilliant wiz bang solution to this whole huge routing table mess. Most likely not. Oh well. -- Alan Hannan Email: alan@mid.net Network Systems/Security Voice: (402) 472-0239 MIDnet, Lincoln NOC Office Fax: (402) 472-0240 " The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. " - George Bernard Shaw