? re: Tony Bates' CIDR Report

On another list, we're discussing whether small ISPs should be able to
obtain globally routable /19s.

A well respected member of the NANOG community has suggested that "routers
would fall over" if the /19s were granted.

As you know, Tony Bates publishes the weekly CIDR report; therein he makes
the following comment:

"This lists the "Top 30" players who if they decided to aggregate their
announced classful prefixes at the origin AS level could make a significant
difference in the reduction of the current size of the Internet routing
table. This calculation does not take into account the inclusion of holes
when forming an aggregate so it is possible even larger reduction should be
possible."

Today's data indicates 2,791 router slots are involved in the "Top 30".

Could these router slots really be made available as Tony suggests?

If not, why not?

Thank you for your time and for your responses. If you will, respond to
pagans@texoma.net also.

If you prefer to remain off the record, reply privately with *OFF THE
RECORD* in your subject line.

Here's today's data as published at
<http://www.employees.org/~tbates/cidr-report.html#General_Status>:

--- 04Jul97 ---
ASnum NetsNow NetsCIDR NetGain % Gain Description

AS174 1148 819 329 28.7% Performance Systems International
AS2493 766 460 306 39.9% i*internet
AS3602 556 309 247 44.4% Sprint Canada Inc.
AS2048 251 120 131 52.2% LANET-1
AS1691 301 172 129 42.9% BCTEL
AS6541 186 59 127 68.3% GTE Intelligent Network Services
AS3804 248 135 113 45.6% Bell Solutions
AS1 1032 922 110 10.7% BBNPLANET
AS1967 186 82 104 55.9% Middle East Technical University
AS839 125 26 99 79.2% North West Territories Regional N
AS701 972 875 97 10.0% Alternet
AS7195 121 43 78 64.5% INTERRED
AS816 318 248 70 22.0% UUNET Canada (ASN-UUNETCA-AS4)
AS2704 256 186 70 27.3% HOOKUP-NET-A
AS4293 108 44 64 59.3% IMCI
AS549 250 189 61 24.4% ONet Backbone
AS5668 72 13 59 81.9% Century Telephone Inc.
AS4648 190 134 56 29.5% NZIX 2
AS3561 942 890 52 5.5% MCI
AS6181 53 4 49 92.5% FUSE-NET
AS3799 74 26 48 64.9% IDS
AS97 175 128 47 26.9% JvNCnet
AS813 208 161 47 22.6% UUNET Canada (ASN-UUNETCA-AS1)
AS719 565 518 47 8.3% LANLINK autonomous system
AS4454 74 27 47 63.5% TNET-AS
AS4763 100 56 44 44.0% Telstra New Zealand
AS2711 98 57 41 41.8% SUNBELT-AS
AS271 98 57 41 41.8% BCnet Backbone
AS3749 75 35 40 53.3% TECNET
AS225 63 25 38 60.3% VIRGINIA-AS