>
> That depends. When the FIB gets too big, routers don't immediately
> die. Instead, their performance degrades. Just like what happens with
> oversubscription elsewhere in the system.
>

If you consider blackholing traffic because the relevant next-hops aren't
present in the FIB to be looked up as "degradation".... I guess?

 If you keep a 10%
> slack for transients, you still have a 20% net gain in your
> equipment's capability versus no compression.
>

This ignores whatever % of something else you have up to get effective
compression.

On Mon, Oct 2, 2023 at 4:41 AM William Herrin <b...@herrin.us> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 2, 2023 at 1:18 AM Nick Hilliard <n...@foobar.org> wrote:
> > The difficulty with this is that if you end up with a
> > FIB overflow, your router will no longer route.
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> That depends. When the FIB gets too big, routers don't immediately
> die. Instead, their performance degrades. Just like what happens with
> oversubscription elsewhere in the system.
>
> With a TCAM-based router, the least specific routes get pushed off the
> TCAM (out of the fast path) up to the main CPU. As a result, the PPS
> (packets per second) degrades really fast.
>
> With a DRAM+SRAM cache system, the least used routes fall out of the
> cache. They haven't actually been pushed out of the fast path, but the
> fast path gets a little bit slower. The PPS degrades, but not as
> sharply as with a TCAM-based router.
>
>
> > That said, there are cases where FIB compression makes a lot of sense,
> > e.g. leaf sites, etc. Conversely, it's not a generally appropriate
> > technology for a dense dfz core device.  It's a tool in the toolbox, one
> > of many.
>
> The case for FIB compression deep in the core is... not as obvious as
> the case near the edge for sure. But I wouldn't discount it on any
> installation that has a reasonably defined notion of "upstream," as
> opposed to installations where the only sorts of interfaces are either
> lateral or downstream.
>
> Look at it this way: here are some numbers from last Friday's BGP report:
>
> BGP routing table entries examined:                              930281
>     Prefixes after maximum aggregation (per Origin AS):          353509
>     Deaggregation factor:                                          2.63
>     Unique aggregates announced (without unneeded subnets):      453312
>
> Obviously adjacent routes to the same AS aren't always going to have
> the same next hop. But I'll bet you that they do more often than not,
> even deep in the core. Even if only half the adjacent routes from the
> same AS have the same next hop when found deep in the core, according
> to these numbers that's still a 30% compression. If you keep a 10%
> slack for transients, you still have a 20% net gain in your
> equipment's capability versus no compression.
>
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin
>
>
> --
> William Herrin
> b...@herrin.us
> https://bill.herrin.us/
>

Reply via email to