North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Route table growth and hardware limits...talk to the filter

  • From: Jon Lewis
  • Date: Sat Sep 08 22:10:27 2007

On Sun, 9 Sep 2007, Randy Bush wrote:


Maybe this is a dumb question, but why isn't there a BGP option to just
filter more specific routes that have the same AS path as the larger
aggregate?

i think i filed that request case three or more years ago. zero response.

IIRC, this has come up on cisco-nsp before, and the response has been that it's very "icky" to do and doesn't really save anything on most platforms.

In the example case of

1) 192.168.0.0/16   AS11111 AS22222 AS33333
2) 192.168.1.0/24   AS11111 AS22222 AS33333
3) 192.168.2.0/24   AS11111 AS55555 AS44444 AS33333
4) 192.168.3.0/24   AS11111 AS22222 AS33333

Forrest says the router should be smart and reject paths 2 and 4 because they're covered by 1. Now what happens when 1 is revoked? Do we lose connectivity to 2 and 4, or does the router have to keep track of all these dependant routes and reinstall 2 and 4 when 1 is lost?

Granted, the overhead involved would maybe be worth it on a platform like the 6500/7600, where you can end up with a surplus of RAM and not enough TCAM, if only the "active" routes were stored in TCAM, but it's not exactly in cisco's best interest to extend the life of gear they'd like to see replaced with new cisco gear. I just can't understand why they won't/haven't done a Sup32-3bxl for those using this platform but not moving enough Gbps to need the traffic capabilities of the Sup720-3bxl.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jon Lewis                   |  I route
 Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
 Atlantic Net                |
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