Prefix Taxonomy Ongoing Measurement & Inter Network Experiment
charter-ietf-ptomaine-01

Routing table growth has been an issue of much concern.  Many have 
talked about temporary methods to alleviate the drain on Internet 
resources. In response to these discussions, aggregation and filtering 
techniques to reduce the amount of routing information carried by 
routers with global knowledge started to be considered.

The purpose of the Prefix Taxonomy Ongoing Measurement & Inter Network
Experiment WG is to consider and measure the problem of routing table
growth and possible interim methods for reducing the impact of routing
table resource consumption within a network and the global Internet.  
The first step of the WG is to define the impacts on routing resource
consumption and to identify the problems facing routing scalability.

The next step is to develop suggestions for filtering and aggregating
prefixes to reduce an individual network's routing table size and route
processing load and to suggest possible knobs that result in the least 
loss of reachability if such methods are determined to be feasible in 
addressing the problem.  This work may possibly define a framework for 
larger efforts to address the problems facing interdomain routing 
scalability.

GOALS:

1) To provide a clear definition of the problems facing Internet
   Routing Scaling today.  This includes routing table size and route
   processing load.

2) To provide a taxonomy to describe prefix information for peer 
review.

3) To collate measurements of routing table scaling data and publish a
   reference list.

4) To discuss and document methods of filtering/aggregating prefix
   information and to discuss and document what support from protocols
   or vendor knobs that might be helpful in doing this.  In addition,
   to suggest policy guidelines to RIRs, LIRs and/or ISPs for
   allocations and aggregations,etc. that may be useful.

5) To determine the long and short term effects of 
filtering/aggregating
   prefixes to reduce router resource consumption.

6) To develop methods of controlling policy information propagation in
   order to limit the need for propagation of prefix sub-aggregates.

Some Relevant References:

http://www.antc.uoregon.edu/route-views/
http://www.pch.net/routing/BGP_table_size.html
http://moat.nlanr.net/AS
http://www.pch.net/documents/data/routing-tables/route-views.oregon-ix.
n
et/
http://www.employees.org/~tbates/cidr-report.html
http://www.telstra.net/ops/bgp/index.html
http://www.apnic.net/stats/bgp
http://www.merit.edu/ipma