Take a Closer Look at the Internet2 Routing Integrity Initiative

By Steven Wallace - Director, Internet2 Routing Integrity

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The Internet2 Routing Integrity Initiative aims to improve the research and education (R&E) community’s adoption of best practices that strengthen the resilience and reliability of data movement across the R&E network ecosystem to support our shared missions. Routing integrity is an end-to-end challenge that requires the participation of the entire Internet2-networked community and beyond.

And our ecosystem is big! If you looked at U.S. R&E as one network, we’d be the 53rd largest network connected to the Internet globally. 

The Routing Integrity Initiative promotes the adoption of the Internet Society’s Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) and additional practices to ensure networks have the capabilities to mitigate attacks and outages of their network infrastructure. Some of the capabilities beyond MANRS include DDoS detection and mitigation, resilient cloud connectivity, and multifactor authentication for network device access and configuration.

Today, the initiative’s five pillars include:

1. Measurement and Reporting

• We produce Route Reports that provide Internet2-connected networks with a comprehensive view of the consistency of their announced routes compared to their published routing policy.
• We facilitate Routing Integrity Assessments with a questionnaire that contains over 30 routing integrity controls and is used to assess a network’s adoption of routing integrity practices and capabilities. Internet2 members who are interested in receiving an assessment can send an email to manrs@internet2.edu.

2. Education

• We convene online workshops that teach routing integrity practices, such as creating RPKI ROAs.
• We hold open office hours to answer questions and assist with individual institutions’ deployments of routing security practices.

3. Global Coordination

• We work with other national R&E networks to coordinate efforts to improve the adoption of routing integrity practices.

4. Outreach and Advocacy

• We communicate with stakeholders and community leaders about how the community benefits from strong routing integrity. 
• We work with the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) to improve the adoption of routing security services for the R&E community.
• We communicate the routing integrity needs of the U.S. R&E community to agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the National Science Foundation.

5. Adoption of Best Practices

• In coordination with our member community, we ensure Internet2’s infrastructure represents routing integrity best practices.

Learn More

If you’d like to learn more about the Internet2 Routing Integrity Initiative, or if you have follow-up questions or feedback, please contact us at manrs@internet2.edu.

ICYMI

• Internet2 Submits Comments to FCC on Secure Internet Routing
• Twitter Thwarts Route Hijacking with Free Service Available to Research and Education Networks
• How to Enable ARIN’s Registry Services to Secure Legacy IP Resources