CIDR,Sprint and the Big Guys.

Fri Apr 5 14:25:48 UTC 1996

> From: Jim Fleming <JimFleming at unety.net>
> To: "'Christian Nielsen'" <cnielsen at vii.com>, "nanog at merit.edu"
> Subject: RE: CIDR,Sprint and the Big Guys.
> Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 01:29:10 -0600
> 	[...]
> Yes CIDR is a good thing...unfortunately, it does not guarantee that the
> net will grow and aggregate in a rational way. When coupled with the
> "slow start" ISP policy, CIDR helps to rapidly fragment the IP address
> space and in some cases causes poor IP address utilization all in the
> name of "protecting the future of the Internet" or maybe "protecting the
> Internet from ISPs".
> 	[...]

It would appear that there may also be a strong argument that the
tremendous proliferation of [small] ISPs is a significant contributor
to the growth of the size of the Internet routing tables.

Perhaps, the [anticipated] consolidation of ISPs will be a significant
event in the efforts to control routing table size.

-tjs