what is this "the" public routing table? where does one get it? in my 25 years of networking I have NEVER seen it. i am convinced that it is a fictional as the "public" Internet. or the "DFZ" ... they do not exist, except in the fevered imaginations of marketing droids... and the virus is more virulent than the H5N1 strain. Note that it affects normally sane engineers who KNOW better.
I think that many, many people make the assumption that a service like RouteViews or RIS holds "the" global routing table because they peer widely in all regions to collect the data.
IMHO, assigning globally unique prefixes to those who utilize IP protocols, regardsless of whom else they choose to "see" via routing is the right course. every other attempt to split the assignements into "us" vs. "them" has had less than satisfactory results.
I think that many people make the assumption that IP addresses can only be used on the Internet because they learned that IP stands for Internet Protocol. --Michael Dillon