Telia Carrier implemets RPKI, reducing the risk of accidental route leaks
Telia Carrier has announced, that it has implemented RPKI – a technology that validates and secures critical route updates or BGP announcements on its #1 ranked global Internet backbone.
BGP is the central nervous system of the Internet and RPKI reduces the risk of accidental route leaks, or even hijacks, which can result in critical outages or fraudulent traffic manipulation.
Internet connectivity has become an indispensable part of our everyday lives and the networks at its core are more important than ever. Telia Carrier’s global Internet backbone, AS1299, is currently the world’s number one according to Dyn Research’s global backbone rankings and its directly connected customer base accounts for nearly 60 percent of global Internet routes.
Apart from ensuring the best possible service and availability for directly connected customers, Telia Carrier’s position as one of the major Internet backbones carries with it the extra responsibility of ensuring the security and stability of Internet routing as a whole.
RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure) is a mechanism by which Internet address (IP) resource owners can ensure that they provide an authoritative list of allowable upstreams to the world.
Network Operators who adopt RPKI validation and filtering can then choose to reject announcements from networks not authorised to advertise those resources. Although not a new technology, RPKI has struggled, like IPv6, with poor uptake across resource owners and network operators.
“As the leading global Internet backbone, route stability is paramount and we encourage our network customers, peers and the Internet community, in general, to support the RPKI initiative by implementing it in their own networks,” explained Jorg Dekker, Head of Internet Services, Telia Carrier.
“We joined MANRS officially last year, and after extensive testing we’re confident that RPKI is sufficiently stable and secure to be rolled-out in our global network. We have already implemented RPKI filtering towards our peering partners and are currently extending this to our customer connections.”
Top-ranked global backbone
For more than two decades Telia Carrier’s global fibre backbone has grown organically, without acquisitions. It was the first network to successfully transmit 1 Tb/s in super channels on its U.S. network and recently announced the first real-time transmission of 600Gb/s wavelengths in a live production network.
According to Dyn Research’s global backbone rankings, Telia Carrier’s global IP backbone, AS1299, is currently ranked number one. The company enables worldwide connectivity by connecting more than 300 Points of Presence (PoPs) across Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East.