On Wed, Dec 05, 2007 at 07:32:33PM -0800, Robert Raszuk wrote: > Hi David, > > So today at the Routing Area Open Meeting you have explicitly expressed the > concern that "routing is about to collapse". > I'm not sure what I said exactly, but if I said that, I probably misspoke (one of the dangers of speaking on the fly, I suppose). But in any event, there is stress on the routing system. And BTW, I'm sure one can find ISPs that will tell you, "nah, its not a problem", because they have the latest and great router [or whatever], but there are plenty of folks feeling the pain. If you dispute that, search, say, nanog@nanog.org (or just the archives of the last meeting). Convolve with the pressure the RIR system is feeling (for example; there many factors here) and one can see storm clouds on the (near) horizion. So what we are facing is not as unidimensional as being able to build a bigger router. We have plenty of existence proofs that we can do that. > I have been following and discussing with various folks this new wave of > fixing the routing. In fact I have my own set of ideas which are in fact > very very close to what Lixia was already proposing. Till now even looking > ten years ahead no one can show the significant proof that "routing is > about to collapse". Well, "about to collapse" probably isn't the way to frame it up. Its a complex problem, involving physics (dynamical systems), technology (what we are ostensibly working on here), economics, public policy (and associated regulatory environment), market dynamics, etc. I've done a bit of work on what the convolution of these various factors might mean, but this is still very much more an art than a science. See e.g., http://www.1-4-5.net/~dmm/talks/NANOG41/perfect_storm.pdf for some thinking along these lines. > Contrary there are number of vendors with deployed platforms which are > today carrying ten fold number of routes what today's internet carry for > some other applications. We all know that we vendors say that. We can always build something bigger; that is simply not the point. IMO we can dispense with this. Its kind of a red herring (I do seem to recall someone saying "with enough thrust..." and yeah, I know it was Milo). So again, that one can build a bigger router is not the point. And BTW, as you know, precise models of how the routing system works (as a dynamical system) are not available, and while although we've done significant reverse engineering, to some exent we're all guessing about the properties of the system. But we can say a few simple things, such as (i). the DFZ is growing, (ii). as the DFZ grows, more of the dynamics of the network are exposed in the core (simple computability arguments here), and (iii). the widespread deployment of IPv6 is a wildcard (O(2^32) >> O(2^128)). > PS. Said all of the above I think there are many other benefits for > introducing the hierarchy in the inter domain routing .. hence I am very > much supporting this as individual. I am just trying to make sure we focus > on the correct problem not the imaginary/non-existent ones :). That seems only prudent, and I'm sure everyone feels the same way. Dave
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