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

[Simon Lyall <simon.lyall () ihug co nz>]

On Wed, 3 Oct 2001, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> Even better would be if the RIRs would divvy up the world in 10 - 20
> regions, and allocate a /8 - /10 to each. That way, the routers don't have
> to know all individual routes to some remote region, but they can
> simply forward the traffic to a part of the network that does know the
> region-specific routes.

I'm afraid that doesn't work. It's great when there is exactly one
provider and nobody multihomes. As soon as people start multihoming then
they have to start announcing smaller prefixes everywhere. Then people
will no longer have circuits to the previous monopoly provider so even if
you routed to the /8 it won't get through.

Sift things around for a few years and you have people in that region
connecting to every possible backbone provider plus most of the 2nd tiers
and misc other countries.

Take a look at 203.0.0.0/10 (from memory) which is Telstra's allocation
for Australia. Almost every single ip in that range is in Australia but
there are hundreds of different paths as ISPs in that range have switched
providers and circuits over the years.

Didn't we have this argument with 8+8 ?

-- 
Simon Lyall.                |  Newsmaster  | Work: simon.lyall () ihug co nz
Senior Network/System Admin |  Postmaster  | Home: simon () darkmere gen nz
ihug, Auckland, NZ          | Asst Doorman | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz