RE: The Gorgon's Knot. Was: Re: Verio Peering Question

["Daniel Golding" <dgolding () sockeye com>]

Sean,

Not at all. Modern 7200-series routers, with newer NPE's and more memory can
easily handle full tables today, and into the future. Therefore, we don't
need to through away 7200s. However, should we all be held hostage to those
unwilling to upgrade their existing routers, and perhaps eventually, upgrade
to new routers?

Routers are, basically, specialized computing devices, with fairly short
lives, compared to things like household appliances, arc welders, or phone
booths. This is reflected in their shorter depreciation schedules.

As the upgrades that extend the life of the routers, in dealing with larger
routing tables, are also the cheapest - i.e. RAM, controlling routing table
size to prevent vast expenditures of money to replace existing routers
simply doesn't hold water.

The Internet did not collapse on the day that 2501s became incapable of
handling a full view of the routing table. There was little gnashing of
teeth or rending of garments when it happened. That is a lesson well
remembered.

- Daniel Golding

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu]On Behalf Of
> Sean M. Doran
> Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001 5:09 PM
> To: bortzmeyer () gitoyen net; jtk () titania net; vbono () vinny org
> Cc: nanog () merit edu
> Subject: Re: The Gorgon's Knot. Was: Re: Verio Peering Question
>
>
>
>
> | When Sprint was filtering there was a demonstrable need based
> on the 64meg
> | limit that
> | mainstream routers had for memory at the time.  I do not see
> that there is
> | any such physical
> | limitation today and I guarentee that the router vendors (all
> two of them)
> | have learned the lesson
> | of not including enough address lines on the equipment to allow for easy
> | memory upgrades.
>
> So we should throw away all the 7200s and similar routers today
> because they are in the way of growing numbers of long prefixes,
> replacing them with new routers manufactured since the time of
> the above-mentioned lesson?   And when shall we throw away
> the 12000s and similar routers (or components thereof) because
> they are underpowered in the face of routing-table growth, compared
> to well-established alternatives?
>
> Incidentally, the lesson learned was that sheer storage AMOUNT
> is only a (perhaps small) part of the problem, compared to the
> processing necessary to use that storage in support of dynamic
> routing (in terms of CPU and in terms of accesses to that memory).
>
>       Sean.