The Internet’s routing foundation has cracks, and they’re growing. Not a single day goes by without dozens of incidents affecting the routing system. Route hijacking, route leaks, IP address spoofing, and other harmful activities can lead to DDoS attacks, traffic inspection, lost revenue, reputational damage, and more. These incidents are global in scale, with one operator’s routing problems cascading to impact others.
Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) is a global initiative, supported by the Internet Society, that provides crucial fixes to eliminate the most common routing threats.
There are two categories of MANRS participants: Network Operators and IXPs.
Network operators should implement at least three of the following four Actions:
- Filtering – Prevent propagation of incorrect routing information
- Anti-spoofing – Prevent traffic with spoofed source IP addresses
- Coordination – Facilitate global operational communication and coordination between network operators
- Global Validation – Facilitate validation of routing information on a global scale
Internet Exchange Points should implement at least three out of the following five IXP Actions:
- Facilitate prevention of propagation of incorrect routing information
- Promote MANRS in the IXP’s membership
- Protect the peering platform
- Facilitate global operational communication and coordination between network operators
- Provide monitoring and debugging tools to members
MANRS is documented on its own website at https://www.manrs.org.
