Scalability issues in the Internet routing system

Wed Oct 19 10:43:30 UTC 2005

Elmar K. Bins wrote:
> Susasn,
> 
>>Using the compression ("cooking") per router can provide one level of
>>abstraction [reduction of prefix space] at router.  So cooking down your
>>Large number of routes to a "minimum" set of routes can provide some
>>leverage against the prefix growth.
> 
> By cooking down the prefixes you unfortunately lose topology information
> which might be a bad thing, and at the same moment disrespect the site's
> wish to how it would like to be routed. Another bad thing, if you think
> of companies/sites paying for the entire network in the long run.

Cooking prefixes was only meant to be done within the router between
the control plane and the (hardware) FIB or forwarding engine.  This
ain't prefix aggregation within the BGP system.

> Apart from that, IMHO cooking down the prefixes only buys time, but does
> not solve the problem. More people will multihome, and with the current
> mechanisms and routing cloud, they have to do it by injecting prefixes.

And this won't change in future.

> I'm not sure whether this hasn't long become an architectural question
> and should be moved to the (new) IETF arch list. Opinions?
> 
> Yours,
> 	Elmi.
> 
> PS: Btw, anyone can give me a hint on where to discuss new ideas for
>     e.g. routing schemes (and finding out whether it's an old idea)?

With pretty high certainy one can say that it is an old idea with some
minor twist or wording change.

-- 
Andre