Scalability issues in the Internet routing system

Thu Oct 27 01:06:48 UTC 2005

>
> there have been public demonstrations of released routers  
> supporting upwards of 1.5M IPv4+IPv6 prefixes and demonstrations on  
> routing churn convergence time. <http://www.lightreading.com/ 
> document.asp?doc_id=63606> contains one such public test.
>

The http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp? 
site=testing&doc_id=63606&page_number=6 part may be a bit  
misleading.  For me it would be more interesting to see what happens  
when 500k routes completely disappear from the router then come  
back.   I want to see a 500k route push from a neighboring CRS in  
that amount of time...

Of course the routes can switch quick when you use a layer of  
indirection (folks have been doing that for a few years now).  My  
question is how fast can you install routes from a standing start (or  
a 1/4 of a standing start if this is 2M prefixes).

I will leave the question on whether it is actually worth an  
investment in time and resources as an exercise for the reader <grin>.

Lightreading people,  test it like that!  It will be much more  
entertaining and perhaps even a bit enlightening to see how major  
vendors compare on "brand new" route installation into RIB and FIB.    
They only have to twiddle a couple bits to make indirection work  
quickly.  Having to deal with a brand new prefix is a completely  
different problem.