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A routing table capable of handling a flat 2^128 addressing space goes beyond the realm of known physics -- and flat 2^64 comes close, at least for a while (consider semiconductor atomic weights, and the fact that 1 mole is approximately 2^79 atoms). That's quite a stretch, but should give a hint as to why flat addressing does not work for every model.
Come on now, a lot of new routing gear made today can just barely handle 2^18 routes, and even the high end stuff tops out at 2^20. We're nowhere near handling 2^32 routes even for IPv4, nor should we be, so lets not start the whole "but ipv6 has more space therefore routes will increase to 7873289439872361837492837493874982347932847329874293874" nonsense again.
Removing the extreme restrictions on IP space allocation by being able to allocate chunks so large that you would RARELY need to go back for a second block would immediate reduce the size of the routing table. Let me state the stats again for the record:
Total ASes present in the Internet Routing Table: 20761 Origin-only ASes present in the Internet Routing Table: 18044 Origin ASes announcing only one prefix: 8555 Transit ASes present in the Internet Routing Table: 2717
There are just not that many distinct BGP speaking networks out there, nor will there ever be. NOW is the time to make certain that IPv6 deployments makes sense in practice and not just in theory, so we don't work ourselves into exactly the same mess that we did in IPv4. Lets stop trying to solve theoretical scaling problems which will never happen at the expense of creating problems which actually DO exist, and apply a little bit of common sense.
whilst i'm at the mic here, ditch the idea of microassignments, just give out a standard /32 block ... lets not start out with ge 33 prefixes in the table when theres no need
Hmmm.... Some interesting points: - -- 2^32 is still larger than 2^20, which is claimed to be the largest feasible size, above. - -- BGP is currently moving to a 2^32 space for AS numbers. That's odd, if there's only 18,044 origins in the current table, and it won't ever grow to much more--how'd we lose 40,000 or so AS numbers, that we now need more than 64,000? Just curious. :-) Russ - -- riw@cisco.com CCIE <>< Grace Alone -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP Desktop 9.0.2 (Build 2424) iQA/AwUBQ2trGREdu7FIVPTkEQI5RQCg+Ol1jrkvldeC5ao403Yw4WiiabgAnj1K KXBXTIBh9R7kDIDBWGooPxdQ =i+AJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----