Multi-6 [WAS: OT - Vint Cerf joins Google]

Mon Sep 12 10:40:43 UTC 2005

On 11-sep-2005, at 20:59, Brandon Butterworth wrote:

>> So how do you know it's 4 million and not 4.1?

> Could be 4.1 or even 4.2.

And therein lies the problem.

> I'm assuming those working on 4byte ASs know, if it's more we'll have
> to migrate again which would be silly so soon

I don't think the people working on 32-bit AS numbers are privvy to  
information that the rest of us isn't. But in any event, 32-bit AS  
numbers allow for 4 billion ASes, not 4 million.

>> We know that 125k works today

> That's quite a bit less than current SUP720-3BXL

I haven't seen the specs for that one, so I don't know if it can hold  
500k _prefixes_ or 500k _paths_. Big difference. Also, not everyone  
is going to buy new hardware immediately.

>> so the storage requirements should
>> sort themselves out according to Moore in 7 x 1.5 years, so that
>> would work in 2013. Processing scales non-linearly, though.

> If we need it then it will exist, if not then we won't be able to do
> that and will do something else instead

That's not good engineering. It's a very bad idea to start a course  
of action without knowing whether you can finish it. Although we  
don't have as much time as we used to have, we still have SOME time  
to come up with new stuff that will make multihoming in IPv6 scale.