Re: number of routes (was EOF Minutes)

[Tony Bates <]

 Christian Huitema <Christian.Huitema@localhost writes:
  * I note in the EOF minutes the following phrases:
  * 
  * >For example, we know that the networks numbers from 193.x.x.x to 194.x.x.x
  *  
  * >are dedicated to europe and on the other end the networks numbers from 
  * >198.x.x.x to 199.x.x.x are dedicated to the US. So, it seems to be possibl
  * e 
  * >to announce these routes with only four routes, but how ?
  * 
  * I don't want to reduce your enthusiasm, but I would like to observe that we
  * currently have over 25000 routes. Reducing 25000 to 4 is an interesting
  * objective, but reducing it to e.g. 250 would already be a very good result.
  *  Or
  * even 2500, for that matter.
  *
Christian, I would like to point out that the 25,000 figure is
incorrect. As of last night the number of routes seen was just under
20,000. Whilst I admit in the context of this dicussion the order of
magnitude is the same it is very important NOT to mis-quote figures in
the current climate of discussions. If you want to check into the
figure at any time please look at 

ftp://ftp.ripe.net/cidr/stats/Table-History
  
  * One of the reasons why I do not believe in the "reduction down to 4" is tha
  * t
  * it smacks of monopolies, implies a very unusual amount of coordination. It 
  * is
  * perfectly sensible for an European network provider to manage its own
  * international connectivity, without going through a particular "common fat
  * pipe". This is not only natural, but a very sound competition strategy. And
  *  it
  * does imply that this provider will announce its own reachability lists,
  * without aggregating them under the continent's prefix.
  *
With this I totally agree. Not in the sense of monopoly building but
purely from a practical engineering perspective. The idea of super
aggregates have been talked about many times within the CIDRD group at
the IETF. My personal view is the topology is so diverse and complex
that whilst you can perhaps announce these aggregates towards a few
places the effort of finding these places and keeping track far
outweighs the gain which will only be seen at certain points and not 
widely. If my memory serves me right the CIDRD group had decided to in
the "near term" at least,  concentrate on
acheiving more aggregation at the provider level where there are still
significant gains to be made and I would urge the EOF group to follow
in this effort for now at least. Estimations for aggregation at the AS
level are also done every night by the way 

ftp://ftp.ripe.net/cidr/stats/AS-agg.*

and there appears (remember this is just an estimation) shows even at 
this level we could back another 5,000 routes tomorrow.  

		--Tony.