$10k per BGP prefix? (was Re: Level 3 BGP Advertisements)

Wed Aug 29 21:32:55 UTC 2012

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 4:55 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>> That's very poor practice. Each announcements costs *other people* the
>> better part of $10k per year.
>
> That sounds ... really really big to me, Bill.  Do you have a source
> for that cust-accounting number?

Hi Jay,

The "better part" of $10k. It's been several years since I refreshed
the source numbers but the formula for the estimate and what were then
the source numbers are documented at
http://bill.herrin.us/network/bgpcost.html

Also note that was for IPv4 announcements. I didn't cost IPv6
announcements but it looked like they were roughly twice the price.
That may or may not still be true depending on how the switching
engines are built these days. My guess is: no change.

And yes, it is a really big number. At the time it meant that roughly
$2B of the annual worldwide economy (something like 2/1000ths of a
percent) was attributable to the BGP prefix count.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
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