2/18/01 Hardware implications of Internet routing table growth Tony Li

Questions Can hardware keep up with the growth of the routing table? If so, how much safety margin do we have? How else might things break?

Current trends Recent trends show high growth Isolate this growth as a predictor of future growth Compare growth to Moore’s law

Moore’s law Well known metric of hardware technological growth Hardware doubles every 18 months Includes clock rates, memory sizes Growth exceeding Moore’s law implies costs grow rapidly Good news: current growth under Moore’s law

–Growth rate is ACCELERATING! –Hyperexponential growth Will eventually outgrow Moore’s law Moore’s law may fail Safety Margin? Current growth rate is about half of Moore’s law However:

Recommendations Vendors –Continue to track Moore’s law Forwarding table Route processor DRAM Route processor performance

Recommendations ISPs –Global prefix conservation Aggregation Limit policy exceptions –Track hardware upgrades –Deploy route reflectors –Upgrade processors before increasing exit points

Recommendations Community –New routing architecture –Multihoming must not require global prefixes –Example: IPv6 plus EIDs –Start NOW!

Conclusions Hyperexponential growth will exceed Moore’s law Safety margins are at risk Community needs to exercise TLC We need concerted effort on a new routing architecture