Hardware implications of Internet routing table growth

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Hardware implications of Internet routing table
growth

• Tony Li

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Questions

• Can hardware keep up with the growth of the
  routing table?
• If so, how much safety margin do we have?
• How else might things break?

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Current trends

• Recent trends show high growth
• Isolate this growth as a predictor of future
  growth
• Compare growth to Moores law

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Moores law

• Well known metric of hardware technological
  growth
• Hardware doubles every 18 months
• Includes clock rates, memory sizes
• Growth exceeding Moores law implies costs grow
  rapidly

• Good news current growth under Moores law

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Safety Margin?

• Growth rate is ACCELERATING!
• Hyperexponential growth
• Will eventually outgrow Moores law
• Moores law may fail

• Current growth rate is about half of Moores law
• However

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Recommendations

• Vendors
• Continue to track Moores law
• Forwarding table
• Route processor DRAM
• Route processor performance

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Recommendations

• ISPs
• Global prefix conservation
• Aggregation
• Limit policy exceptions
• Track hardware upgrades
• Deploy route reflectors
• Upgrade processors before increasing exit points

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Recommendations

• Community
• New routing architecture
• Multihoming must not require global prefixes
• Example IPv6 plus EIDs
• Start NOW!

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Conclusions

• Hyperexponential growth will exceed Moores law
• Safety margins are at risk
• Community needs to exercise TLC
• We need concerted effort on a new routing
  architecture