[99206] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Route table growth and hardware limits...talk to the filter
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lincoln Dale)
Sun Sep 9 19:37:07 2007
From: "Lincoln Dale" <ltd@interlink.com.au>
To: "'Jon Lewis'" <jlewis@lewis.org>
Cc: <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:35:51 +1000
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0709080744110.30395@soloth.lewis.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
> > what i think it boils down to is that many folks seem to run default-free
> > because they can, because its cool, because its what tier-1 folks do,
> because
> > (insert cool/uber reason why here), but not necessarily because they HAVE
> TO.
>
> Consider a regional or local ISP providing BGP to a customer. The
> customer also has a connection to a "Tier 1". The customer may start
> asking questions when they notice they get 250k routes from one provider
> and only 50k to 80k less routes from you.
It is all in the education. Educated right, you could claim that you're
providing a superior service by _filtering_ what announcements you accept.
better yet, you can claim that you're saving the customer money - THEY don't
have to invest in more RAM / larger routers / larger TCAMs.
OR, money dynamics will be that you charge a higher price for customers that
want a 'full feed' with the higher price based on the higher price you have to
pay to run a default-free network.
the reality is that for many end customers (even multi-homed ones), receiving a
'default' route from an upstream rather than a ton of more-specific routes is
perfectly acceptable. they can filter out that 0/0 if they don't want it,
otherwise "things still work" if they accept it.
in short: it is a MYTH that folks THINK they NEED a full routing table. most
folks don't.
cheers,
lincoln.
