On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Geoff Huston wrote:
The rate of growth in the table and the prefix length distribution
in the table both point to the growth of small prefixes (/24)
as a major factor in the growth of the routing table.
There are strong indications that NAT is one factor behind this
part of the BGP table.
I believe that would be missinterpretation of the data. Operationally,
there is strong pressure on ISPs to allocate few addresses to individual
customers and I suspect that this philosophy moves upward in the address
space allocation philosophy. Because the allocations occur in smaller
chunks (to manage supply), there is less opportunity to aggregate larger
blocks of addresses leading to the observation re small prefixes. NAT
reduces the number of discrete IPs needed for an Internet connected site.
It allows the restricted allocation philosophy, it doesn't cause it.
Dave Morris