200K prefixes - Weekly Routing Table Report

Sat Oct 14 00:08:32 UTC 2006

Sorry, I got several questions emailed to me, so I'll save my own 
bandwidth at the expense of everyone else's, and hopefully answer 
some people that didn't take the time/effort to ask...

The Dirty-Thirty is what I called the list of "Aggregation Summery" 
in the cidr report (cidr-report.org) that gets posted to the NANOG 
list.  They put the top 30 ASes that have the most to gain through 
aggregation in their report for all to see.  When discussing this in 
the past I referred to it as the dirty thirty.

In the past, I suggested giving out "I'm the dirty thirty" t-shirts 
at NANOG meetings to those attending from the networks listed. 
Require them to be worn to attend.  Put slogans on them like 
"Aggregate is what you put in concrete, right?"  Have a cute picture 
of a stick person on it with a concrete block for a head, next to a 
router or something.

More affective, less funny, and also somewhat discussed in the past, 
was my suggestion of the creation of a route-server style of 
distribution of filters (like the cymru bogon servers) that would 
filter routes to the top 5 people on the list, essentially black 
holing the absolute worst of the worst.

It basically would be similar to email RBL, except that it would 
break the entire net, not just SMTP.  ;-)  While it may be 
sacrilegious to discuss such things like purposely breaking parts of 
the net on the NANOG list, it's for the greater good.  So hear me 
now, and belive me later.........

It would work like this:

Step 1)     Read the cidr report

2)Contact those top 5 networks with a simple message. 
"Congratulations!  You're in the top 5 of the dirty thirty! 
Aggregate now, because if you're still on the dirty-thirty list 60 
days from now, and your entry can gain more than a 30% reduction size 
through aggregation, we're going to add you do the black hole server. 
Have a nice day."

3)Do this weekly.
3a)Shrug off threats of lawsuits.

4)In the mean time, a few crazy network operators would actually 
subscribe to the "Aggregation Route Server."  It might be a guy with 
an ASN and a /24 in his apartment, or a small company with an 
underpowered router that's facing an upgrade and wants to try to 
change the world, maybe a small host  or ISP, or whatever.  Or maybe 
a larger organization might actually be insane enough to apply this 
to all of their border routers.

"Crazy" is the key operator here.  And I mean that in a good way. 
:-)  It's crazy that the net even works... just announce some routes, 
and the world accepts them?  Now *THAT'S* crazy!

The whole idea is a terror tactic like weapons of mass destruction 
and mine fields. And email RBLs.  Remember when some through RBLs to 
be crazy?  Who would block email and cause collateral damage for 
themselves just to stop a few spams? Turned out that the answer to 
that question was "Everybody." Getting blacklisted had quite an 
affect on people, and that alone closed a lot of open relays.  Being 
responsible, and working to fight spam wasn't enough.  It took a 
terror weapon like RBLs to get people to close their relays.  I 
maintain that we are at the same point with the routing table.  It 
would provide motivation to aggregate,to stay as far away from that 
top 30 list as possible.   And because the rest of the world wouldn't 
actually know WHO is subscribed, or what impact it might actually 
have, or if say, a large tier-1 nsp might actually subscribe to it 
just to be belligerent (tired of needing more RAM for their core 
routers, and can make a crazy business case for it [didn't Sprint do 
something like that a long time ago or something?] ) or actually just 
plan crazy.

Maybe no one would join.  That's OK too.  The dirty thirty 
participants don't get to know that information.  No one would know 
except for the operators of the (free) service.  Because while you 
may have to be crazy to subscribe to it, you'd have to be equally 
crazy to sit on the top of the dirty thirty, and ignore the warnings 
that you might be black holed.  Maybe a single tier-1 nsp decides to 
use it.  That's pretty significant. Fight crazy with more crazy!

5)After 60 days, if the network that was in the top 5 to qualify 
hasn't moved out of the dirty thirty all together, actually go add 
all their un-aggregated space to the route server.  Because we only 
really want to block the more specifics that are causing the bloat....

5a)Continuously monitor the actually global routing table, in 
somewhat real time... when they get aggregated, stop the madness 
immediately, and automagically.

6)Avoid lawsuits.  Or get sued.  Or fold and comply with the lawyers' 
demands.  Whatever.
(I don't have a solution to this.... it's just a general 
requirement... I didn't say this would be easy, or even possible to 
operate in a sustainable manor.... I'm just saying that it is 
technically possible.  Logic would dictate that RBL operators 
*shouldn't* be liable to lawsuits from spammers, but this is a pretty 
messed up world....)

7)Check to see if there routing suddenly becomes more aggregated.  At 
some point, of the table as aggregated enough, it's not worth 
continuing.  The point is maximize gains (go after the worst 
offenders, and scare everyone else in to being responsible too) with 
minimal effort.  It's not possible to max aggregate everything, and 
that's not the point.  The point is to get the worst of the worst to 
be more responsible.

Unfortunately, experience has taught me that there will always be 
plenty of irresponsible and/or clueless people to go around.  So it 
very well may be a never ending process.

8)Return to step 1.

I've got some old routers sitting around, and a network to host them 
on..... I've wanted to do this now for quite some time, but don't 
have the time resources to make it all work.  Anyone game to help me 
out with this?  It's just crazy enough to work.  Or am *I* just crazy 
for thinking so?

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"I'll reboot mine, if you reboot yours."