Re: [RRG] Geoff Huston's article on BGP stability, update statistics and damping

[jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa)]

    > From: Robin Whittle <rw@firstpr.com.au>

    > Geoff Huston has a new article "Damping BGP":

    >  "... the busiest 1% of prefixes responsible for 24% of the routing
    >  updates for the month."

While I agree that whatever's causing this ought to be fixed, there are some
points we need to not lose sight of.

First, fixing this would be a *one-time* improvement in the growth curve for
the update rate (versus long-term time). I.e. you'd see a flat spot (or a
drop) in the curve, after which it would resume its previous growth.

Second, 25% is not peanuts, but it's also not an order of magnitude, and
eliminating these wouldn't get us into a whole new operating region. I don't
know what the current growth rate for BGP updates is, but if it's anything
like the growth rate of the table itself (as one might reasonably assume it
is), 25% is not a long calendar time.

Again, it ought to be fixed, but let's not kid ourselves that this is the
solution to our problems.

	Noel

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