Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security

Routing Security is Vital to the Future
and Stability of the Internet

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.

How can MANRS help?

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.

MANRS outlines four simple but concrete actions that network operators should take:

Filtering – Ensure the correctness of your own announcements and of announcements from your customers to adjacent networks with prefix and AS-path granularity
Anti-spoofing – Enable source address validation for at least single-homed stub customer networks, your own end-users, and infrastructure
Coordination – Maintain globally accessible up-to-date contact information
Global Validation – Publish your data, so others can validate routing information on a global scale

A separate set of Actions applies explicitly to Internet Exchange Points.

Is routing security important to you?

Please consider implementing the MANRS actions and joining the MANRS community. There are two categories:

Network operators – Implement the actions in the MANRS document and join the initiative.
Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) – Implement the actions in the IXP Programme and join the initiative.

MANRS requires collaboration among participants and shared responsibility for the global Internet routing system. Joining MANRS means joining a community of security-minded organizations committed to making the global routing infrastructure more robust and secure.

Two case studies further outline the benefits of MANRS participation:

What People Say About MANRS…

Coordination and cooperation based on our relationships of mutual trust are the key elements to run the Internet, and we have shared responsibilities to improve the Internet operation. As part of the Internet operation community, IIJ is committed to the MANRS actions. Junichi Shimagami, Director CTO, Internet Initiative Japan Inc.