A call for the future. Was: Re: Verio Decides what parts ofthe internet to drop

Prabhu Kavi prabhu_kavi at tenornetworks.com
Wed Dec 8 13:51:03 UTC 1999


The phone system doesn't require anything close to millions of routes for
LNP.  Instead, at the time of call setup, there is a lookup that performs
the translation between the portable number (which is the logical address)
 and the physical address (which to date is still mostly statically
routed using a well-defined hierarchy based upon physical location).  The
LNP translation is quite akin to that of a DNS lookup, which is again
done at the beginning of an IP "conversation".  

Prabhu

Kai Schlichting wrote:
> 
> At 04:14 PM 12/6/99 -0800, Austin Schutz wrote:
> 
> > >>      In the far term as space becomes scarce we will need to find a solution
> > >>to wasted B space, but that is several years out. Perhaps by that time routers
> > >>will have so much memory and CPU as to make an extra ~4 million possible routes
> > >>negligible.
> > >
> > >The danger of /17 blocks in B space is limited to 64*256 more routes
> > >(16 k more, maximum).
> >
> >         Yes, you could arbitrarily say /17 is a fair border, and then people
> >would complain about their /18s being unreachable. The 4 million number
> >reflects 64 * 2^16 theoretical /24 routes - 64 * 256 current theoretical /16
> >routes = 4177920 routes. I haven't heard (yet) of people complaining about not
> >being able to get /25 to /32 routes globally routable.
> >         Perhaps a somewhat less arbitrary limit corresponding to the smallest
> >allocation made by ARIN would be in order. That would currently be 2^(20 - 16)
> >  * 64 * 256 - 64 * 256 = 245760 extra routes. Still a pretty highg number, but
> >I imagine it would take several years to break up the existing Bs.
> >
> >         Austin
> 
> And what I'd really like to know: how many millions and billions were spent
> by domestic telcos to accomodate and ultimately deflect anti-trust action
> heading their way regaring local, 800 (and soon: cellular, at last!)
> number portability ? (lets call it xNP)
> 
> I mean: there must be an order of magnitude of increased HD space,
> RAM and SS7 network bandwidth in use right now due to xNP.
> Which means that the telcos probably asked their vendors to provide
> such capabilities for their switches - and got what they asked for!
> 
> Lets face it: if the US PSTN can accomodate tens of millions of essentially
> freely-routed (well, the stubs of the SS7 network are certainly very static,
> heh) phone numbers, it must be possible to scale the Internet beyond such
> a small pisser: a 1/4 million routes in the BGP table.
> 
> Given that more and more end-user organizations realize that it's
> impossible to do proper large-scale business on the Internet without
> "cheating" allocation policies in gross and wasteful ways in order to
> create proper load-balancable (uh, I am sticking my head out here)
> multi-homed networks, a change in attitude amoung us implementors and
> R&D folks is in urgent need: are we constrained merely by our small minds,
> equipment limitations and current software implementations and
> protocols, or have we indeed hit a fundamental brickwall with BGP-4,
> as some scary early findings of CAIDA seem to suggest ?
> 
> As network operators, I think we should prepare for the equivalent
> of the US running out of 10-digit phone numbers, a situation that
> might make Y2K look like a footnote in global telco history:
> 
> - IPv6 is not the answer to our routability problems, but it will vastly
>    accelerate the reachability problems we already have. Provider-based
>    prefixing will be a breaking dike once it becomes obvious to people
>    that geographical or organizational hierarchies cannot be dictated
>    over business needs.
> - organizations must be relieved from wasteful and expensive renumbering
>    processes as much as possible, especially since organizational growth
>    will essentially be infinite, either in numbers of organizations,
>    or hosts connected per organization.
> - there will be exactly one road to Rome: one organization, one route per
>    logical location. Read my lips.
> 
> There can be no denial that this is where things are going. You may not
> like it, but this is where its headed right now, with all the ugly
> side effects of IP space waste and cheating on allocations just to
> overcome some basic operational problems.
> 
> Lets start preparing for this, as we will do this not because it's easy
> and apparent, but because hard business-needs are going to drive us this
> way in at most a year or two, with overwhelming benefits to endusers of IP
> space outweighing all efforts to overcome the current limitations.
> 
> All ends and odds on this are open, as far as technology, implementation and
> settlement models (if any) is concerned, and I'd welcome someone experienced
> with setting up an IETF WG stepping forward. Title for such a WG ?
> "Internet Routing and Address Space Use of the Future". If such WG fitting
> such an agenda already exists, please kindly point this out to me.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> --
> kai at conti.nu             "Just say No" to Spam            Kai Schlichting
> Palo Alto, New York, You name it             Sophisticated Technical Peon
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Prabhu Kavi                     Phone:  978-264-4900 x125
Director, Prod. Mgmt.		FAX:    978-264-0671
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