IPv6 BGP prefixes usage

As we should know by now, the last of the ipv4 prefixes have been issued. The grow of the BGP ipv4 table has been holding stable at  around 500K prefixes  -+  for the last 6 months.

Here's a snapshot of a cogent link of mine & for the last 6months

The BGP ipv4 unicast table has probably reached the highest point that it will ever see for the time being.  It will probably also not shrink or be eliminated any time soon either. Ipv6  migrations and new networks are growing by the week/month/year.

If you have been monitoring the BGP table grow for over the last  20 years , you will be amazed on the growth of the table. The folks at potaroo have been collecting & providing this information for a few decades now.

http://bgp.potaroo.net/

Since the burst and ramp up of the late 90s and  after the millennium year, the  BGP table has been on a steady increase in size. This has made a direct impact with both  memory & cpu utilization required by a a router.

The ipv6  unicast BGP table is still relatively smaller , and will stay that way for some time. Here's one of my juniper router and a collective of end-of-month averages going back for the last 3 years for ipv6 prefixes.

note:  I'm missing data  for a few months that this router was down or the poller was down

The BGP ipv6 prefixes will always continue to grow. But no where as fast as our BGP table.


inet6.0: 19202 destinations, 234813 routes (19202 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)
+ = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both

Ken Felix
Freelance Network/Security Engineer
kfelix  -----a----t---- socpuppets ---dot---com

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