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Trends and Comparisons in Global BGP Data

  • From: Alan Hannan
  • Date: Sun Apr 08 04:57:08 2001

	  "There are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and 
	statistics"
	
			- Benjami Disraeli
	
  Because I was curious, I merged 2, then 3 of these
  bgp graphs.  This is done using a graphics tool and is not
  at all alleged to be accurate, but it should be illustrative.
	
	  http://www.routingloop.com/share/2bgps.gif
		- geoff's and tbates'
	
	  http://www.routingloop.com/share/3bgps.gif
		- geoff's, tbates', and jhma's
	
	  http://www.routingloop.com/share/overlay.gif
		- same as 3bgps.gif with 2 extrapolated trends
	
  Conclusions drawn (none of them revelatory):

	Certainly the data is dissimilar, w/ geoff's generally
	higher, undoubtedly due to the reasoning below:

> So whats going on? Inside AS1221 there is a fair number of local routes 
> (about 22,000 of them). Over the past three months AS1221 been removing 
> noise components from the external view of AS1221 (such as removing 
> asymmetric satellite services using BGP routing), and the view on these web 
> ....

 	The data from different sources is quite different.  My experiences
	at a large ISP subsidiary of a large telco, upon considering
	merging w/ another large telco, caused me to do tremendous
	analysis of BGP information, such as comparing 'size' in
	several metrices, such as routes, traffic, address_space, etc..

	What I found (in this past life) was that correlating the data from 
	different sources was particulary difficult, if not impossible, 
	and that most all views into the global routing table were 
	indeed different, as Geoff states below:

> My personal take on a bottom line: every view of the BGP table is relative, 
> and changing local circumstances as well as changing global circumstances 
> generate changes in the local perspective of the BGP table. Its sometimes a 

	It does seem that we've seen a bit of a slow down in routing table
 	growth.  Someone with more time should take a look at breaking down the 
        implied curves over given periods.  It sure looks like we were on a 
	slow exponential curve from ~1998 to 3Q2000.  3Q2000->Now looks like
	more of a linear growth.

	I suspect if one asked these 3 folks for the tabular data, a wiz with
 	something like mathematica could do some really nifty analysis.

  -alan

  legend -- 	cyan = ~jhma's work
 		red  = geoff's work
		grey = tbates' work
		purple = extrapolated trends