- BGP routing table growth shows signs of market saturation and CDN-driven shifts.
- IPv4 growth plateaus while IPv6 adoption shows a steady rise but remains uneven globally.
What happened: BGP 2024 a snapshot of internet core infrastructure
In the past year, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) reflected key shifts in the internet’s growth patterns. The report highlights how the demand for IPv4 addresses slowed significantly, with 2024 showing a 6% increase in IPv4 routing table entries.
Amazon played a substantial role by announcing 81 million new IPv4 addresses in December 2024. Conversely, the number of routed Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) increased modestly by 3.2%.
This data suggests a plateauing of IPv4 growth due to market saturation and a wider reliance on private content distribution networks (CDNs), which reduce dependency on public transit routing.
On the IPv6 front, BGP metrics indicated an annual growth rate of 10%, driven largely by more specific route advertisements. However, IPv6 adoption remains inconsistent, with only seven major economies accounting for over 71% of global IPv6 address spans.
This fragmentation highlights how traffic engineering, route hijacking mitigation, and access network consolidation contribute to the diverse landscape of internet routing.
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Why it’s important
The analysis of BGP data is crucial for understanding the resilience and scalability of the internet’s infrastructure. As routing tables grow, the strain on routers increases, pushing the need for optimized hardware configurations, such as Ternary Content-Addressable Memory (TCAM).
The shifts toward CDN-centric networks suggest a consolidation of services, where fewer networks dominate large portions of web traffic distribution. Additionally, the report emphasizes the risk of network instability due to overly specific routing announcements, a concern that could amplify in IPv6 deployments as address space utilization diversifies.
Understanding these trends is vital for ensuring network efficiency, addressing security concerns, and planning for long-term investments in internet infrastructure.
