It is perhaps useful to note that there is at least one network out there with over 210,000 network entries in their tables today-- with multiple routers in that same AS having well over 100 BGP sessions on them-- comprised of around ~25% iBGP/eiBGP sessions in peer groups, and the remainder being eBGP sessions. These boxes push a lot of traffic, deal with a large/flat IGP, do IP filtering, and a variety of other random services. That same network had ~182,000 network entries in their tables in October of 2000. This could be reduced, and the rate of growth slowed, if necessary, but there apparently hasn't been a compelling enough reason for them to do so yet-- which doesn't necessarily indicate anything beyond the fact that there hasn't been enough pain in that area for them to change anything yet. Not to say that great pain isn't on the horizon. - jsb I don't doubt that this will continue to be a topic that is over-sensationalized, as is done here: http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0402routing.html Which includes this tasty quote: "By the time the table gets to around 200,000 entries, we may be pushing a default-free router well beyond its processing capability." ...and this one: "Half of the companies that are multihomed should have gotten better service from their providers" [...] "ISPs haven't done a good enough job explaining to their customers that they don't need to multihome."

Granted, but are you saying that the 15 minutes it takes one of my BGP sessions to reload has no relevance to the crusty, old processor doing route calculations on 104,000 routes? Multiply the CPU available by 5, and then look for bottlenecks. Seems sane to me. Also seems a hell of a lot easier than trying to redesign the network characteristics in 1 year and implement them ... IPv6 anyone?

-travis

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*shakes head* people keep forgetting this. Do you guys also think you can solve the internets problems by adding more bandwidth?

Adrian

-- Adrian Chadd "The fact you can download a

100 megabyte file

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<adrian@creative.net.au> from half way around the world should be viewed as an accident and not a right." -- Adrian Chadd and Bill Fumerola