[c-nsp] DNS amplification

Tue Mar 19 18:12:14 UTC 2013

On 2013-03-19, at 13:50, Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 1:45 PM, David Conrad <drc at virtualized.org> wrote:
>> On Mar 19, 2013, at 10:12 AM, Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> There's nothing inherent in BGP that would not work with an
>>> unconstrained growth of the routing table, right? You just need enough
>>> bandwidth and interrupts to deal with updates.
>> 
>> With enough thrust, pigs fly quite well.  Landing can get messy though...
> 
> I was being serious... the current 'bgp unconstrained dies' problem
> isn't such a problem if you have (today):

We've been watching unconstrained growth of the routing table for quite some time, and the result is an Internet that still keeps the unwashed masses Harlem shaking. It doesn't *look* like a picture of dramatic, world-ending instability.

There's no obvious indicator in the story so far to confirm the prediction "unconstrained growth of the routing table will kill the Internet". Which is not to say that the prediction is wrong, but at some point you've got to look at the guy wearing the sign with the crazed expression and wonder whether he's a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic.

You could say that growth in the routing system to date *has* been constrained, by economics or regulation or RIR policies or uptake of 32-bit AS numbers or something else, and express concern that those constraints are changing and that change is dangerous. But after a while your hands get tired and you have to stop waving them.

We've been saying "unconstrained growth bad" for BGP for years. Presumably we're not all insane. Where is the science?

Joe