AS Number Registrations

[Shane Kerr]

> In many cases, trends like these are self-limiting.  Many exponential
> growth curves top out and go sigmoid (s-shaped) as they encounter natural
> limits.  Perhaps this is not a problem -- perhaps we run out of networks to
> multi-home, for instance, long before this becomes a serious issue.  But
> looking at the numbers above makes me nervous as heck.

If a business can get an ADSL line in addition to the T1 that it 
normally connects to the Internet for $150 a month or so, used 
primarily for redundancy, I can see 40000 businesses in America 
wanting such a thing.  I'm sure there's 40000 readers of 
http://www.slashdot.org who would like to multi-home their 
toasters, or whatever (I'm sure they all sent ARIN e-mail complaining 
about their virtual hosting policy today).

I agree that exponential growth tops out, if only because there's only 
6 billion people on earth, but there's only 64000 or so AS numbers, and 
way more sites than that that want to have reliable Internet access.  
This is reasonable, and possible, if only because you don't really need 
an AS number issued to you to be multi-homed.  I think.  :)

Shane