“Internet Armageddon–Again”

Net Economy (06/04/01) Vol. 2, No. 12, P. 44; McGarvey, Joe

Net Economy (06/04/01) Vol. 2, No. 12, P. 44; McGarvey, Joe

The Internet’s potential for rapid growth has some experts concerned whether the public network infrastructure can handle greater traffic. Experts expect growth to test currently deployed Internet routers within the next 12 months, but some, including Judy Estrin, Packet Design CEO and former CTO at Cisco Systems, say routers are faltering right now because route tables have grown too large for them to handle. Routers base their forwarding decisions regarding the possible paths of destinations on the Net on the information that they get from a route table. Still, not all experts believe that there is a crisis since Cisco, Juniper Networks, and Avici Systems are all rolling out new routers that can handle at least a half million routes. Critics also point out that route management problems in the form of route flapping is getting worse and could result in packets never reaching their destination. However, equipment makers and standards groups say they are moving in the right direction by building stronger implementations of BGP and tweaking BGP and other router protocols. Critics still see these attempts as temporary solutions and say an overhaul is needed, but most industry experts expect the Internet to continue to evolve gradually into a stable and agile communications medium.