BGP Growth projections

Fri Jul 10 17:03:53 UTC 2009

Mark Radabaugh wrote:
> I'm looking for new core routers for a small ISP and having a hard time
> finding something appropriate and reasonably priced.   We don't have
> huge traffic levels (<1Gb) and are mostly running Ethernet interfaces to
> upstreams rather than legacy  interfaces (when did OC3 become legacy?).   
> Lot's of choices for routers that can handle the existing BGP tables -
> but not so much in small platforms (1-10Gb traffic)  if you assume that
> IPv6 is going to explode the routing table in the next 5 years. 

More like, ipv4 is going explode the routing table in the next 5 years?

On a percentage basis v6 is in fact growing faster. but one of these
things is growing at 1k-2kprefixes a week and the other is ~ 2k prefixes
total.

It's plausible that you need 500k v4 dfz routes at or before 2012 that
would be right on schedule from the 250k mark...

Fitting a curve to the v6 table growth is an interesting experiment in
modeling your expectations. I think it's an excellent opportunity for a
synthetic futures market.

>   The
> manufacturers still seem to think low traffic routers don't need much
> memory or CPU.
> What projections are you using regarding the default free zone over the
> next 5 years when picking new hardware? 