Understanding BGP Misconfiguration

This paper analyzes the prevalence of BGP misconfigurations and their causes. Specifically the authors focus on two types of misconfigruations:

1. Origin Misconfiguration. These occur when routes are injected accidentally into the BGP tables. Specifically this includes hijacking addresses and propagating private prefixes.

2. Export Misconfiguration. These occur when a route is exported in violation of policy.

The authors use a BGP listener (RouteViews) to view updates for 19 ASes. They identify origin misconfigurations by looking for updates that are short lived, lasting less than 1 day. To verify this classification they email the network administrators. For export misconfigurations the authors inferred relationships between ASes using "Gao's algorithm" and tested for violations to standard policies.

The findings showed that "at least 72% of new routes seen by a router during the day are a result of misconfiguration." However, these misconfigurations only lead to disruptions in connectivity 13% of the time. 80% of these incidents are corrected within less than an hour.