INX is committed to providing a secure service for networks that our our BGP route server (BGP-RS) service. To minimise human interaction, and the possibility for mistakes, this entire process is automated.
When you first connected to INX, we would have looked up, and/or asked you for your Internet routing registry (IRR) object. As a peer, you are able to login to the INX portal at https://portal.inx.net.za/ and view the IRR object that we have adopted for you. (Once you are logged in, check under the "Details" tab). For example, if you were from Showmax, and logged into the portal, this is what you would see below. Most organisations use the same AS-SET for IPv4 and IPv6, so it's not uncommon to have the IPv6 AS-SET empty.
INX uses this information to automatically create and update route filters for our route-servers. We do this every 4 hours, starting just after midnight, to make sure that we remain current with any network's changes. If you make a change to your AS-SET during the course of the working day, rest assured that we will pick it up and reflect the changes within 4hours!
If you plan to make additional BGP announcements to our route server service, do ensure that there is a corresponding IRR entry for this. Note that we do strict IRR filtering. This means that if we query the IRR system, we must be able to find an exact object match for the route announcement that you want to make. We do not perform "loose" checks. To illustrate here is a simple example:
Assume you only had a route object for 198.51.0.0/16, with origin-as AS65001 but you wished to advertise 198.51.0.0/16 and 198.51.4.0/22, also from AS65001. Because there is no discrete and specific route object for 198.51.4.0/22 this prefix would be filtered by our route-server filters!
INX also validates the RPKI status of the announced prefix. If the RPKI status is INVALID, the route will be dropped
To show you what (if any) network prefixes are filtered by the INX route servers, the INX portal also provides peers with a list of filtered prefixes, once logged into the INX portal. We strongly encourage you to look at these, and perform the necessary changes to ensure that they are not filtered. Fixing your filtered routes is really just an exercise in making sure that you keep your IRR objects up to date, and do not perform accidental leaks.
Please support us in helping to keep the Internet safer!
