Scalability of iBGP Path Diversity Concepts

Improving the path diversity seems to be the next fundamental step in the iBGP evolution. Focusing the advantages an improvement of the path diversity implies, network protocol designers have disregarded the most critical drawback so far: The effect on the scalability of the iBGP routing, a fundamental requirement for production usage. This aspect is examined by the analyses discussed in our paper. In this paper, we provide the theoretical groundwork for scalability analyses of four highly relevant path diversity schemes. Based on this groundwork, we exemplarily predict the information load the schemes induce in a system of a large ISP. Generalizing the system-specific results, we give an outlook on the load that can be expected in comparable ASs. We found that for two schemes currently in the standardization process, scalability problems in large ASs as they are operated by ISPs seem likely.