Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is useful to troubleshoot connectivity issues due to route propagation, IP & Autonomous Systems Number (ASN) mismatching, BGP announcements and more.
BGP visualizations are available below the traceroute monitor in Explorer, or any waterfall that has "debug on error" enabled, or traceroute selected as as an additional monitor. The data and visualizations for these widgets are provided by a third party called RIPE. Please note, this feature is subject to RIPE’s service performance and availability.
In total, there are six different BGP widgets that can show below the waterfall. This article details these widgets.
Not all widgets will show on the waterfall at all times, as some prefixes and ASNs are not supported by the widget. To view other widgets, access RIPE’s website from the waterfall by clicking on RIPEstat above the BGP widget. Or you can click on the '?' icon on the top right and select RipeStat.
Typically the BGPlay widget will display. This shows the routing history related to a specific set of resources (prefixes, Autonomous Systems, IPs) by means of an animated and highly interactive graph. Usually, the timeline is within 7 days.
- The red node is the Autonomous System (AS) containing one of the queried resources
- The blue node represents AS containing a router in peering with an RRC. (Remote Route Collector, a software router running on a Linux platform, which only collects default-free BGP routing information.)
- The black nodes represents AS's that have been traversed
When a BGP announcement occurs, the creation of a new path connecting a set of nodes is animated. Each event involving that path triggers an animation specific for the type of the event.
- During a path change, the path morphs from the old route to the new one
- During withdrawal the path blinks several times and then disappears
- During a re-announcement of a prepending, the path blinks once
All the paths that do not change their route for the whole time interval are collapsed together in a dashed path. Avoiding ambiguity allows the user to understand how an AS has been reached while collapsing paths together reduces the complexity of the graph.
The upper part of the widget shows information about an AS or a pathwhen you hover your mouse over it. Otherwise, information about the last occurred event is shown.
In the lower part of the widget, there is a timeline panel. The first timeline shows the trend of the number of events over time. The second timeline shows individual clickable events ordered by time. Both of these timelines feature a red cursor point at the current time instant. Changing the current instant or clicking on an event will cause the graph to update.
For more information on BGPlay, please feel free to visit RIPE’s website and click on the Info menu.
Routing History widget shows the time ranges when a particular prefix was announced, and by which AS it was announced. This widget consists of two views: graphical and table view.
For a graphical view, when the queried resource was a prefix, the graph will show the prefix and more of less specific prefixes, as well as the AS's which announce them.
The main graph shows the routes as a stacked heatmap graph, with the AS on the left and the announced prefix on the right side of each series. The color of the heatmap depends on how many peers have seen the specific route. Green means there were many peers seeing it and red means fewer peers seeing it.
Here is an example of Routing History of an IP address:
Here is an example of Routing History of an ASN:
For more information on Routing History, please feel free to visit RIPE's website and click on the Info menu.
Prefix Count displays the number of prefixes or the amount of address space announced by an AS over time. Toggle between the two views using the selector above the graph. Data is split into IPv4 & IPv6.
For more information on the Prefix count, please visit RIPE's website and click on the Info menu.
Autonomous Systems (AS) Path Length shows several ways of calculating the path length between the queried AS and the RIPE NCC’s Remote Routing Collectors. The central point represents the queries AS which each spoke is the path to a route collector. The closer a point is to a collector, the greater the path length from the queried AS to the collector.
For more information on AS Path Length, please visit RIPE's website and click on the Info menu.
BGP Looking Glass shows the BGP routing state for a given prefix as seen by the RIPE NCC’s Routing Information System (RIS). The RIPE NCC collects and stores Internet routing data from several locations around the globe, using the Routing Information Service (RIS), established in 2001.
Information presented in a tree per RIS RCC. It is possible to expand branches to get progressively more information.
- Level 1 - Information about particular originating ASNs
- Level 2 - Information about particular BGP peers
- Level 3 - Raw details of a particular route
Queries for single IP addresses will return results for the routed prefix if one exists.
Times shown next to the Last update in the route details are in UTC.
*For more information on BGP Looking Glass, please feel free to visit RIPE's website and click on the Info menu.