Big academic networks mind their MANRS to secure routes

This matters because carriers follow where BoffinNets first tread

Europe's GEANT and Australia's AARNET have joined The Internet Society's Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) initiative.

First launched in 2014, MANRS targets two causes of frequent outages in the Internet's huge-but-fragile routing infrastructure: border gateway protocol (BGP) black holes from incorrect route advertisements (whether caused by malice or fat thumbs); and spoofing route information in DDoS attacks.

The Internet Society (ISOC) hopes to eliminate such snafus by codifying the business processes under which route information is handed around.

It has, however, found adoption a slow business – in 2016 only 42 network operators had joined, and earlier this year, ISOC started trying to recruit internet exchange points as well.

This post at ISOC explains the participation of the European academic network GEANT goes beyond using the protocol.

ISOC's Kevin Meynell said because the world's academic networks don't have to compete with each other, they can move quicker on initiatives like MANRS – hopefully demonstrating their benefits to give commercial providers a nudge along.

As well as taking part in MANRS, GEANT will be “providing input and feedback on the MANRS Observatory”, which should help analyse the “security and resilience of the routing system.”

Australia's AARNET announced its participation on Twitter:

AARNet has joined the #MANRS initiative, which aims to provide crucial fixes to reduce the most common routing threats. Find out why good MANRS is advocated by @internetsociety | https://t.co/eelbIWsIo9

— AARNet Australia (@AARNet) July 4, 2018

Last month, the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) signed an MoU with ISOC, and will become the MANRS advocate in the region. ®