too many variables

Thu Aug 9 23:10:39 UTC 2007

>  I asked this question to a couple of folks:
> 
> 	"at the current churn rate/ration, at what size doe the FIB need to
>          be before it will not converge?"
> 
>  and got these answers:
> 
> --------- jabber log ---------
> a fine question, has been asked many times, and afaik noone has
> provided any empirically grounded answer.
> 
> a few realities hinder our ability to answer this question.
> 
> (1) there are technology factors we can't predict, e.g.,
>         moore's law effects on hardware development

Moore's Law is only half of the equation. It is the part that deals with route
churn & the rate at which those can be processed (both peer notification and
control-plane programming data-plane in the form of FIB changes).

Moore's Law almost has zero relevance to FIB sizes. It doesn't map to growth in
SRAM or innovations/mechanisms for how to reduce the requirements for SRAM
while growing FIB sizes.

cheers,

lincoln.