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

["Medhi, Deep" <DMedhi@umkc.edu>]

> A set of observations across the entire route views history 
> is graphed at http://www.potaroo.net/bgprpts/rva-index.html
> 
> Since 1998 the network was grown from 50,000 entries to 
> 225,000 entries and advertised address space now spans 1.7 x 
> 10**9 /32s, growing from
> 0.95 x 10**9 in 1998. The number of AS's in the network has 
> grown from 3,000 to 26,000
> 
> BUT the average path length has remained pretty steady - most 
> Route Views peers see the entire network at an average AS 
> path length of around 3.4, and have done so since 1998.
> (http://www.potaroo.net/bgprpts/bgp-average-aspath-length.png)
> 

I'll speculate here...

A possible reason could be the increase in the number of exchange points
(both public and private, large and small) around the world. This, in
turn, could partly be possible due to drop in price in networking gears
used at exchange points, but also due to connectivity, deployment and
drop in per unit price of submarine cables (which are pretty much all
fiber-optic based).

For instance, PeeringDB (http://www.peeringdb.com) gives the current
number for public exchange points to be nearly 170. Does anyone have
info on growth in exchange points over the years?

For a recent submarine cable map, see TeleGeography's map:

http://www.telegeography.com/products/map_cable/images/sub_cable_2007_la
rge.jpg


Thanks.

	-- Deep
	http://www.csee.umkc.edu/~dmedhi

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