verio arrogance

Richard A Steenbergen ras at e-gerbil.net
Fri Jul 19 16:16:18 UTC 2002


On Fri, Jul 19, 2002 at 11:00:38AM -0400, Daniel Golding wrote:
> 
> I think we are at the point where the vast majority of backbone routers can
> handle 200K+ routes, at least in terms of memory. The interesting point we
> are getting to, is that the most popular router in the world for multihoming
> can't handle the routing table. I'm referring to the Cisco 3640, which has
> largely supplanted the venerable 2501 as the low-end multihomer's edge
> router of choice.
> 
> With a reasonable number of features turned on (i.e. SSH, netflow, CEF), the
> 3640 can't handle two full views anymore, due to it's limitation of 128MB.
> While this may be a good thing for Cisco's sales numbers, in this winter of
> financial discontent, I wonder how this is effecting the average customer,
> and what is generally being installed to replace the 3640s.

If a 3640 customer can't handle multiple full views, why can't they
filter some junk /24s themselves? This isn't really a good enough reason
for backbone providers to do the filtering.

As for the convergence time argument, the limiting factor is CPU time,
not the number of routes or amount of data exchanged (though obviously
more routes == more cpu). In the core, is there really that big a 
difference between 93k and 113k? On the borders, how much cpu time is 
saved vs how much cpu time is burned doing the filtering?

Which leaves us with the question of, are there still MSFC1's or other
devices with 128mb memory limits in these networks which are hurting at
113k? Is there actually a legitimate technical need to filter off 20k
routes, or are the people doing it stuck in a mental time warp from the
days when it was a necessity?

Or, is it really just people trying to do the "correct" thing? If you see
"almost" no change in connectivity after removing 20k of cruft, and the
very few people who are broken are the ones who needed attention called 
to their poor route announcing skills anyways, maybe it's a good thing 
for reasons other than router performance?

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177  (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA  B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)



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