Securing the Routing System at NANOG 74

The level of interest in the general topic of routing security seems to come in waves in our community. At times it seems like the interest from network operators, researchers, security folk and vendors climbs to an intense level, while at other times the topic appears to be moribund. If…


An Update on Securing BGP from IETF 102

One way or another we’ve been working on various aspects of securing the Internet’s inter-domain routing system for many years. I recall presentations dating back to the late ’90’s that point vaguely to using some form of digital signature on BGP updates that would allow a BGP speaker to assure…


BGP in 2017

It has become either a tradition, or a habit, each January for me to report on the experience with the inter-domain routing system over the past year, looking in some detail at some metrics from the routing system that can show the essential shape and behaviour of the underlying interconnection…


Ripe 75

RIPE held its 75th meeting in Dubai in mid-October. As usual there was a diverse set of presentations covering a broad range of activities that are taking place on today’s Internet. The topics include issues relating to network operations, regulatory policies, peering and interconnection, communications practices within data centres, IPv6,…


Notes from IETF 99 – The IEPG Meeting

It’s hard to classify the IEPG meetings that occur at the start of the IETF week. Many years ago they had a role in allowing network operators to talk to other operators about what they were seeing and what they were thinking about. Those days are long since over, and…


BGP More Specifics

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the routing protocol that literally keeps the Internet glued together. The public Internet is composed of some 58,000 component networks (BGP calls them “Autonomous Systems” (AS’s)), many of which are very small, while some are very large both in terms of geographical coverage and…


RIPE 74

RIPE 74 was held in May in Budapest, and as usual it was a meeting that mixed a diverse set of conversations and topics into a very busy week. Here are my impressions of the meeting drawn from a number of presentations that I found to be of personal interest.…


IETF 98 Report

The IETF meetings are relatively packed events lasting over a week, and it’s just not possible to attend every session. Inevitably each attendee follows their own interests and participates in Working Group sessions that are relevant and interesting to them. I do much the same when I attend IETF meetings.…


BGP in 2016

It has become either a tradition, or a habit, each January for me to report on the experience with the inter-domain routing system over the past year, looking in some detail at some metrics from the routing system that can show the essential shape and behaviour of the underlying interconnection…


BGP Large Communities

IPv4 addresses are not the only Internet number resource that has effectively run out in recent times. Another pool of Internet numbers under similar consumption pressures has been the numbers that are intended to uniquely identify each network in the Internet’s inter-domain routing space. These are Autonomous System numbers (ASNs).…