RE: [RRG] Moving forward...

["Ross Callon" <rcallon@juniper.net>]

> > Are you saying that we can definitely build routers that could
> > handle say, 10 million NATted /24s, so that all small and medium
> > businesses can multihome?
>
> Not "definitely" but certainly with a reasonable level of confidence,

> yes. Vendors say they can to 2M now, this is only a factor 7 more,  
> that's 2^3, Moore should take care of that in 5 years, so doing this  
> within 10 years should be easy.

We might want to make a distinction here between:

1) What some (the most limited of the widely deployed) existing 
   equipment can do without any hardware upgrade
2) What other existing widely deployed equipment can do without any 
   hardware upgrade
3) What equipment being designed today will be able to do without 
   any significant chance in router architecture or cost (making 
   use of updated hardware capabilities that are in the works for 
   other commercial reasons)
4) What could be built in the next five to ten years if we were 
   willing to have the cost of some parts of the router increase 
   linearly with FIB size.

No one is talking about "4", for the simple reason that we don't have
to: "3" will handle the anticipated growth, with some room to spare. "4"
could *definitely* handle a lot more than 10 million routes if we needed
to. (But why would anyone build it unless it is needed?) "3" will get
close to 10 million /24 routes (within a factor of two one way or the
other, with details varying). 

I can see good reasons for taking on the type of thought that the RRG is
doing. Worrying about whether it will be possible to build new routers
to support currently anticipated future growth is *NOT* one of the good
reasons. 

Ross




--
to unsubscribe send a message to rrg-request@psg.com with the
word 'unsubscribe' in a single line as the message text body.
archive: <http://psg.com/lists/rrg/> & ftp://psg.com/pub/lists/rrg