[arin-ppml] IPv6 Non-connected networks

[George Bonser]

> My point was that I'd really like to see us stop suffering failures of
> imagination in the name of careful reason. ARIN has to be the
> moderating force on the routing table only because we've failed to
> imagine a individually driven process that renders the role
> unnecessary.
> 
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin

Hi Bill,

And my point was that the size of the routing table is only an issue
because of hardware vendors lack of resources in their gear.  Having
more resources available eliminates the entire issue.  A disruptive
player in the hardware market that introduces a router that can handle
two or four or eight times the number of concurrent flows and routes as
current gear would moot the point.

We are expending a lot of energy because of router manufacturers
unwillingness (I presume) to increase the amount of resources in the
gear and we are looking for a way to route around that failure, so to
speak.

As soon as someone comes to market with gear that handles it at a
reasonable price, the problem goes away.

Can you think of a barrier to producing hardware with more resources
other than the fact that they misjudged the growth requirements and
don't want to obsolete their existing product until they get some more
cash out of it?  Taking a quick look at the Brocade XMR I see 10 million
BGP routes, 1 million IPv4 routes in hardware (FIB), 240,000 IPv6 routes
in hardware (FIB).  One would think they would these days be able to
quadruple that density on the same real estate these days and the issue
goes away completely. (note, I believe that the v4/v6 routes is
either/or not and).  And for every v6 route in the FIB, I believe it
costs you room for four v4 routes. So with current hardware as v6 grows
and v4 grows on dual stacked gear, either we are going to have to go
through weird contortions to get things to work or the vendors are going
to have to produce more capable kit.  At some point soon price/port/pps
isn't going to be the constraining factor, it is going to be how many
routes it can use.

It isn't primarily a policy issue with the RIRs as it is a marketing
issue with the hardware vendors.  They can make this problem go away and
at some point, someone will.

George