>I've been studying BGP, but something that keeps bothering me when I study
>it is that there are less than 65000 , (64511 to be exact) public AS
>numbers. It would seem to me that these would quickly run as out, as I would
>think that there are that many corporations world-wide that connected to the
>internet via BGP. Any thoughts on this?
>
>
>Thanks,
>Joey Fowler
A valid observation that AS numbers are not an unlimited resource.
The idea of a 32-bit number is indeed being examined in the IETF.
In general, it isn't an immediate crisis. As of today's CIDR Report
from Tony bates, there are 9674 AS in the global routing system.
IIRC from September or so, there were then about twice this number
that actually had been issued.
For enterprise multihoming when the enterprise homes to multiple POPs
of the same upstream, private AS work quite well. When enterprises
multihome to two upstreams, private AS still can work with more
administrative coordination.
The bottom line is that the number of prefixes in the table is a more
serious problem at the moment. This is more a convergence and
computation problem than a memory problem.
No question, however, that the 16 bit AS space won't last forever.
Based on current projections, though, the IPv4 address space is
likely to exhaust first.
IPv6 is starting to become real; the 3rd generation wireless industry
has adopted it and that is likely to be the "killer application" for
V6.
--
"What Problem are you trying to solve?"
***send Cisco questions to the list, so all can benefit -- not
directly to me***
Howard C. Berkowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Technical Director, CertificationZone.com
Senior Mgr., IP Protocols & Algorithms, NortelNetworks (for ID only)
but Cisco stockholder!
"retired" Certified Cisco Systems Instructor (CID) #93005
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