I guess it's time to have a look at the actual scalability issues we face in the Internet routing system. Maybe the area of action becomes a bit more clear with such an assessment. In the current Internet routing system we face two distinctive scalability issues: 1. The number of prefixes*paths in the routing table and interdomain routing system (BGP) This problem scales with the number of prefixes and available paths to a particlar router/network in addition to constant churn in the reachablility state. The required capacity for a routers control plane is: capacity = prefix * path * churnfactor / second I think it is safe, even with projected AS and IP uptake, to assume Moore's law can cope with this. 2. The number of longest match prefixes in the forwarding table This problem scales with the number of prefixes and the number of packets per second the router has to process under full or expected load. The required capacity for a routers forwarding plane is: capacity = prefixes * packets / second This one is much harder to cope with as the number of prefixes and the link speeds are rising. Thus the problem is multiplicative to quadratic. Here I think Moore's law doesn't cope with the increase in projected growth in longest prefix match prefixes and link speed. Doing longest prefix matches in hardware is relatively complex. Even more so for the additional bits in IPv6. Doing perfect matches in hardware is much easier though... -- Andre