redundancy [was: something about arrogance]

Wed Jul 31 07:36:52 UTC 2002

Pedro Roque Marques wrote:

>------- Start of forwarded message -------
>From: pre at PRE.ORG (Patrick Evans)
>To: Jim Shankland <nanog at shankland.org>
>Cc: nanog at merit.edu
>Newsgroups: jnx.ext.nanog
>Subject: Re: redundancy [was: something  about arrogance]
>Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0207310130150.3798-100000 at pimlico.PRE.ORG>
>Date: 31 Jul 02 00:32:49 GMT
>References: <200207310019.RAA05167 at ndk.shankland.org>
>Organization: Juniper Networks, San Francisco, California
>
>
>On Tue, 30 Jul 2002, Jim Shankland wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Patrick Evans <pre at PRE.ORG> writes:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>My first project, if network availability were a key issue, within any
>>>organisation would be to a) obtain [an AS number] and b) make use of
>>>it.
>>>      
>>>
>>Heh.  How many bits in an AS number, again?
>>
>>    
>>
>*grin*
>
>That's a problem with the underlying protocol. I get paid to run
>operational networks, not bleat endlessly about "how much work would
>it *really* take to implement 24bit AS numbers?" :)
>  
>

The plan is 32 bits... (see draft-ietf-idr-as4bytes-05.txt for details).
Essentially i think it just takes interest/demand from ISPs since the 
mechanism can be implemented and deployed without in a non disrruptive way.

>Crying about protocol deficiencies is a distant second to keeping a
>business up and running these days.
>  
>
imho, protocol efficiencies are not so much the problem. If it is clear 
the scale routing must operate on the right hardware/software can be 
engineered... that assuming that people are willing to upgrade their 
existing boxes and that it isn't a requirement that it must run on 5 
year old small entreprise boxes.

The later seems to be the biggest problem although. Effectivly the 
growth of routing table size is  bound by the maximum memory size and 
CPU capacity present in the most common boxes used in the network and 
not by protocol efficiency.

It is not so much of a question if one can build a database engine and 
respective distribution protocol than can scale upto n million paths but 
of the limits of the current day moral equivalent of the AGS+. Thus all 
the people that have these deployed in their networks tend to be 
concerned about the need to upgrade them as the size of the routing 
table increase.

As one of the posters was king enought to point out these sometimes end 
up being more issues of economics/buisiness than of engineering.

regards,
  Pedro.