[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: A Modest Proposal for an Alternate IPv6 Allocation Process

[Seth Mattinen]

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> I have a comment/question on this..
> 
> It appears the central rationale for this policy assumes that most
> people are going to want to filter incoming BGP announcements,
> presumably because the BGP table is going to grow rapidly and they will
> otherwise run out of ram in their routers.  Is this assumption realistic?
> 
> VISA and MasterCard corporation have devised systems that can handle
> hundreds of millions of non-contiguous credit card numbers coming in for
> approvals, from every corner of the globe.  I therefore have an
> extremely difficult time believing that it is impossible to build a
> router that cannot handle, say, 10 or 20 million BGP routes.  I also
> have a difficult time believing that this cannot be done for the $50K to
> $100K that Cisco and Juniper seem to think they can charge for a
> fully-optioned BGP router.
> 
> Today I can walk into the discount store and by a brand new PC with 2GB
> of ram for under $350.  Yet, Cisco and Juniper are still including as
> standard ram amounts, miserable, paltry amounts far smaller than that.
> 

Two points:

1) On software platforms you're right. Last week I wanted to buy a 512
MB upgrade for a 2811. It uses DDR 266 unbuffered ECC; old stuff. Cisco
wanted $2,400 for it. They balked at me not wanting to buy their
official RAM, claiming warranty voiding, etc. I said there's no way in
hell I'm paying that much for old RAM so I bought some cheap-ass
Kingston for $26 that works just as well.

2) On hardware platforms TCAM is not DRAM.

~Seth