Re: [Idr] why has 4096 bytes limit on BGP messages size?

Pekka Savola <pekkas@netcore.fi> Fri, 15 June 2007 05:48 UTC

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Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:48:02 +0300
From: Pekka Savola <pekkas@netcore.fi>
To: Danny McPherson <danny@tcb.net>
Subject: Re: [Idr] why has 4096 bytes limit on BGP messages size?
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On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, Danny McPherson wrote:
> On Jun 14, 2007, at 9:59 AM, Pekka Savola wrote:
>> (The header fields already tell the length of the message, so allocating 4K 
>> buffer for each BGP message (when most messages are much smaller than 4K) 
>> is probably a waste in many cases.)
>
> Pekka,
> Do you have some references to data supporting your comment here
> regarding most messages being smaller than 4K?

Yes.  I've sometimes taken debugs logs of BGP when a DFZ table flapped 
and looked at the packets.  Here's a plot of BGP Update size versus 
occurrences (in this about 10-15min trace, 87K BGP updates).  BGP 
Updates are sent by a Juniper T-series router.  The smallest is 26B, 
the largest 4095B.  Top 20 sizes (6995 through 1229 occurrences) are 
all between 58 and 95 bytes.

(Not sure if the small attachment gets on the list, but if not, I'll 
post it somewhere.)

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings
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