ACSP Suggestion 2008.14 Construct Validated IRR Data

Open

Using the Resource Public Key Infrastructure to construct validated IRR data

Authors:    Randy Bush & Danny McPherson
Version:   1.0
Date:  April 7, 2008

1. Introduction

This is a proposal to introduce a new registry that augments Internet Routing Registry (IRR) data with the formally verifiable trust model of the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) and provide ISPs with the tools to generate an overlay to the IRR which is much more strongly trustable.

2. Summary of current problem

The current methods for adding or updating Internet Routing Registry
(IRR) data have weak security, and lack an inherently formally verifiable structure, resulting in a low level of trust in IRR data. To address the problem of this low level of trust in IRR data, there have been proposals to use Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) to sign IRR data. The problem with most of the proposed schemes, however, is that they are conceptually weak and hard to implement due to the differences between the trust structures of the IRR and the RPKI. More recently, however, Ruediger Volk has described a very simple method of using the RPKI that involves no change to the IRR, software that uses the IRR, or the RPKI.
This is a proposal to implement Ruediger Volk's idea to strengthen the operators' use of data in the global IRR.

3. Situation in other RIRs

This proposal has been made in APNIC, and will be made in RIPE very soon.

4. Details of the proposal

It is proposed that:

4.1 ARIN publish a new IRR that contains 'route' objects generated from Route Origin Authorizations (ROAs) in the RPKI.

• This new IRR would accept 'route' objects generated from the global RPKI, and would therefore cover the entire routing space, in so much as the RPKI covers the global space.
• Operators who use the IRR to generate routing filters can choose to put this new IRR registry logically in front of the other registries. Operators can then give preference to routing origin information that can be formally validated, and eventually, can would be able to filter explicitly based on this information.
• This new registry would be made available as an IRR publication point

4.2 ARIN publish an open source tool that enables network operators to generate their own overlay IRR publication points themselves.

• Such generated IRR publication points should be identical to the one generated and made available today by ARIN.
• Producing overlay IRR publication points allows security conscious operators to have a more formal trust model that prevents attacks on the IRR segment generated and served by ARIN.

5. Advantages and disadvantages of the proposal

Advantages:

• Router filters would be more reliable as they would prefer RPKI validated origins, where available, rather than those not validated in the RPKI. ISPs would achieve this by configuring tools that automatically generate router filters to give priority to the IRR publication point of the new registry based on RPKI-signed objects.
• The community will have an enhanced ability to filter BGP peer prefixes at no additional cost or changes to the data or tool bases. This would increase the reliability and security of the global routing system.
• This new IRR publication point would be much simpler than other current ideas about how to use RPKI in conjunction with IRR data.
• This proposal requires no changes to RPSL, the IRR, IRR toolsets, or the RPKI.

Disadvantages:

• None are known

6.  Effect on ARIN members

See 'Advantages' above.

7. Effect on NIRs

None are known