Time to ditch old routers

markcastle · 26th October 2008

Just thought i'd post this here for anyone that doesn't already know about this....
From Ripe: AS Number Change Could Affect Internet Routing from 1 January 2009

Quote:

AS Number Change Could Affect Internet Routing from 1 January 2009
Manufacturers urged to upgrade routers and network management software to support the use of four-byte Autonomous System numbers by 1 January 2009.

Amsterdam, 24 July 2008 - Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), including the RIPE Network Coordination Centre (NCC), have warned that routers and network management software should be upgraded ahead of the increased distribution of four-byte (also known as 32-bit) Autonomous System (AS) numbers.

AS Numbers are a vital part of the Internet's core routing system, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). With existing two-byte AS Numbers predicted to run out in early 2011, RIRs will issue four-byte AS Numbers by default, unless otherwise specifically requested, beginning 1 January 2009, as the next phase of a transition from two-byte to four-byte numbers. Following a globally coordinated policy, the RIRs began allocating four-byte AS Numbers by request only in January 2007; January 2009 marks the transition to allocating four-byte AS Numbers by default.

Without timely support from vendors, network operators risk having routers and network administration systems that won't accept the expanded four-byte number format. As such, the RIRs urge operators to verify that their vendors' routers will support four-byte AS Numbers.

Geoff Huston, Chief Scientist at APNIC, the RIR for the Asia Pacific Region, expressed concerns over failure to prepare for four-byte AS Numbers: "AS Numbers are often used to identify external relationships, set routing attributes, and manage traffic. Learning from our current experiences with IPv6 preparation issues, Internet engineers designed four-byte AS Numbers to be backward compatible with much of the installed network infrastructure. But new entrants and networks that are expanding or merging will need new AS Numbers and, as of 1 January 2009, these will be, by default, four-byte AS Numbers. If router software and support systems in critical parts of the Internet's infrastructure aren't upgraded by January, we'll encounter some significant network routing problems. We're extremely concerned that a lot of routers and network management software out there cannot and will not be able to recognize four-byte AS Numbers".

An Autonomous System (AS) is a collection of networks, or routers, administered as a group sharing a common set of routing policies, each defined with a unique number, or AS Number. Massive Internet growth has depleted the existing pool of two-byte AS Numbers (65,536 numbers in total). As a result, engineers have expanded the AS Number space from two bytes to four bytes, to include over 4 billion AS Numbers. Some routers do not currently support the use of four-byte AS Numbers.

To help vendors understand what they need to do to provide four-byte AS Number support and to help network operators find products that support four-byte AS Numbers, APNIC has set up a special website at ICONS.

Schumie · 26th October 2008

Might be a bit extreme saying time to ditch old routers, Cisco (in standard IOS) still don't have this implemented, and last time I saw on the road map it was scheduled for Q2 next year I believe (those running XR etc.. have the support)

Ultimately, it's not going to break your access to networks that run with a 4byte ASN, as a special ASN has been reserved to assist in the transition (so, when you see AS23456, that means someone is actually using a 4byte and you aren't supporting 4 byte ASNs).

The downsides to not actually seeing the 4byte ASN - lack of really easy visibility of originating ASN, AS path filtering challenges etc...

Oh, and if someone with a 4byte ASN decides to connect to you directly, you're going to struggle if you aren't able to support it

Either way, many people been pushing back on their vendors (vendor C has been relatively slow in responding

) although I, and a fair few others have been pushing this on them for at least the last year actively, and probably longer actually.