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bgp.tools April 2023 Changelog

Another month, and another set of updates for bgp.tools.

A bunch of work is being done behind the scenes to prepare bgp.tools to begin working with IXPs to gather data, and I (Ben) presented to PeeringDays 2023 in Sofia about my upcoming plans for that.

In the meantime, please enjoy this changes that have happened this month:

Client side software agents are in testing

While bgp.tools has offered the ability for users to query individual BGP sessions, and use RIPE Atlas for trace routes, the ability to provide direct trace routes has been missing… Until now!

Currently in testing, is a way to run an agent inside your network to allow bgp.tools to display a quick and seamless traceroute/ping looking glass. The bgp.tools agent traceroute/ping is orders of magnitude faster than RIPE Atlas, and often faster than traditional looking glass scripts.

Please get in touch at admin@bgp.tools if you wish to be a part of this test. General availability is expected by next month.

Whois data is now parsed

Bored of copy and pasting things from the whois tab into the search bar?

Worry no more! For most RIRs you can now click links on parsed areas of the whois output to easily move around or query other objects that are outside of bgp.tools remit!

Overhaul of the IXP Page/Tab

IXP Pages have had a huge overhaul this month with quick links to PeeringDB and EuroIX’s IXPDB visible on the page, data availability display to give a quick glance about what bgp.tools knows about the IXP and a top vendor table that is available if bgp.tools has MAC address data for the IXP.

In addition, if available you can now see if an ASN is peering on the route servers in real time. This data does not come from self-declared sources like PeeringDB, but instead bgp.tools is doing real time lookups against a feed of the route collector! This method does not work on all IXPs yet since it requires data from those IXPs, but I hope to have this feature more widely available soon! Peers that are known to be peering with the IXP route servers at the time of page load are now shown with a green “RS” box to show this. Regular ticks still indicate that the peer is known to be online either via ICMP or ARP.

RPKI ASPA is now supported

ASPA is the latest addition of BGP routing security improvements that provides data on what ASNs should be upstreams of a network. bgp.tools ingests this data and shows it on the upstreams tab where available similar to how RPKI ROA’s are displayed

Small fixes/changes

  1. Full Listings of a single IP’s Forward DNS data is now only available to logged in users due to excessive scraping
  2. RIPE Atlas Probe lists should be more stable
  3. Added more types of automatic IPv6 PTR detection
  4. Prefix lists should now have alt text for the country flag
  5. The antarctica flag is now uses https://www.truesouthflag.com/flagofantarctica
  6. Fixed bug where AS BGP Monitors would get stuck in permanent disabled state
  7. The prefix page now displays the AS Name as well as the ASN (If there is only one originating ASN)
  8. Traceroute hover text now shows the full PTR /and/ the IP address

Last updated: 4th April 2023