Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) is a security framework by which network owners can validate and secure the critical route updates or Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) announcements between public Internet networks. BGP is essentially the central nervous system of the Internet and one of its fundamental building blocks.
RPKI proves the association between specific IP address blocks or ASNs and the holders of those Internet number resources. In practical terms, validators are used within an AS to ensure the validity of BGP route updates. RPKI uses a certificate structure that verifies a resource holder's right of use of their resources and can be validated cryptographically. These certificates are known as Route Origin Authorization (ROA).ROA validation is an important process within the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), since the certificates contain a number of critical routing parameters, including Origin ASN, Prefix and Max Length.
With RPKI, the certificate structure mirrors the way in which Internet number resources are distributed. That is, resources are initially distributed by IANA to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), who in turn distribute them to the Local Internet Registries (LIRs), and ultimately, to their customers – the autonomous system owners.
RPKI reduces the risk of accidental route leaks and helps mitigate the blast radius of any incidents caused either by human error or BGP optimization software. It also helps prevent malicious IP resource hijacks, which can result in critical outages or fraudulent traffic manipulation
Arelion was the first Tier-1 transit network in the world that launched the RPKI, successfully filtering invalid announcements from all external BGP sessions.
Our approach is that the industry would benefit from every single entity operating in the default-free zone deploying RPKI, so here are a couple of things to take into consideration:
RPKI is included in all Arelion’s IP Transit offers.
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