Please send me your comments

[J. Scott Marcus]

At 13:18 11/02/2000 -0800, CJW wrote:
>Hi everyone out there in rtma-land,
>
>I think it's time I try again to get you all involved.  I'd like to
>come up with a list of agenda topics and perhaps meet as a working group
>at the next ARIN meeting.  So far some topics I can think of are:
>
>ways to summarize the routing table info:
>   a) discuss Scott Marcus's info on AS number depletion
>      (perhaps compare it to Geoff Huston's data presented
>       last week at the APNIC meeting)
>   b) how do assigned ASNs compare to the ones showing up 
>      in the routing table?

I think that there are about 16,000 assigned between the three RIRs?  The
number active in the routing tables is 8,896 per Phillip Smith's data;
thus, a ratio of just under 2:1.

Anecdotally, I have heard it claimed that this number was much higher a few
years ago, perhaps as high as 4:1.  Has anybody done the arithmetic?



>   c) how many prefixes are being assigned per ASN?

Per Smith's data, 89,629 entries in the routing table versus 8,896 origin
ASes present in the Internet routing table.  Thus, a ratio of 10:1 in
comparing routing table entries to ASes assigned (which is not exactly what
you asked for).  I would be curious to know the trend in this ratio - it
seems to me that conservative allocation practices will tend to push it
higher, while CIDR pushes it much lower.  And it may have a tendency to
decrease, other things being equal, as the scale of the Internet increases.
 So it is being pushed in opposite directions by different forces...



>   d) perhaps compare registered prefixes and length to 
>      advertisements.  For example how many advertisements
>      are generated for each assigned prefix?
>   e) perhaps query experts on when the existing network 
>      equipment will no longer be able to handle the size of
>      the routing table (not just # of prefixes but number of
>      paths, not just amount of memory required, but what happens
>      if there are flaps)
>
>Any other thoughts?  What info should we be gathering? (if any)