Catchpoint's BGP Smartboard is designed to help you monitor internet routing to your advertised prefixes. Catchpoint continuously gathers route information from dozens of BGP peers around the world, and the Smartboard compiles this data to show you what routes are available and what routes have been added or removed during the selected time-frame. This can help you detect any significant changes in routing that might indicate a route leak or hijack.
Let's look closer at each of the sections in the BGP Tests Smartboard.
Source
This is the specific BGP test whose data is being rendered in the Smartboard. You can change the source by clicking on the "Source" button in the upper left, then selecting the desired data source. When you make a selection, the Smartboard refreshes all sections with data from the new source.
Timeline
The BGP timeline shows how routing to your prefix has changed over time. It plots two metrics, Availability and Reachability, which are closely related. Availability indicates the percentage of all of our BGP Peers that show a path to your prefix at a given time. Reachability does a similar calculation, but it disregards peers that have not had a path to your prefix for more than 24 hours. This eliminates the effect of regionality, as peers in regions you do not advertise your prefix to will be ignored. This also makes it more precise for seeing how routing has actually changed. In addition to the Availability and Reachability graphs, any Announcement and Withdrawal events are displayed along the top of the timeline. You can find out more detail about each event by viewing the BGP Events tab, described below.
Summary Information
Following the timeline are several cards summarizing the routing data displayed in the Smartboard.
- Peers Information - shows the number of peers that have a path to the advertised prefix vs. those that have no path ("isolated" peers). You can hover over the "Isolated" pill to see a list of those peers.
- Prefix Information
- Prefix - The IP Prefix monitored in the selected Source Test.
- RPKI - Indicates whether RPKI Validation of the prefix is available.
- RIR - the Regional Internet Registry that the advertised prefix is registered with.
- Owner - the name of the entity that owns/advertises the prefix.
- Reachability - the percentage of the peers in Catchpoint's collector network that had a path to the advertised prefix, ignoring any that had no path for over 24 hours.
- Availability - the percentage of all peers in Catchpoint's collector network that had a path to the advertised prefix.
- Withdrawals - the number of route withdrawals that occured during the selected timeframe.
- Announcements - the number of route announcements that occured during the selected timeframe.
BGP Routes View
The BGP routes view shows an interactive mapping of the routes advertised to our collectors for your monitored prefix. The timeline along the top shows path changes (announcements and withdrawals). By default the view only shows those routes that changed during the selected timeframe, but you can click the radio button to view "All Paths." if desired. You can also "quick-filter" the view by clicking any endpoint or AS in the diagram. This will show only paths that include the selected item.
Peers Table
The Peers Table view shows the same information as the BGP Routes View, but in a tabular format. You can sort the list as desired, and select one or more rows to filter the BGP Routes view accordingly.
BGP Events
The BGP Events tab displays detailed information about all Announcement and Withdrawal events that occurred during the selected timeframe. The timeline in this tab represents the time window selected at the top of the Smartboard, and you can adjust the time selection further within the tab. All events within your selected timeframe are listed in the table with full details.
