Abstract

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the de facto interdomain routing protocol of the Internet. Although the performance of BGP has been historically acceptable, there are continuing concerns about its ability to meet the needs of the rapidly evolving Internet. A major limitation of BGP is its failure to adequately address security. Recent outages and security analyses clearly indicate that the Internet routing infrastructure is highly vulnerable. Moreover, the design and ubiquity of BGP has frustrated past efforts at securing interdomain routing. This paper considers the vulnerabilities currently existing within interdomain routing and surveys works relating to BGP security. The limitations and advantages of proposed solutions are explored, and the systemic and operational implications of their designs considered. We note that no current solution has yet found an adequate balance between comprehensive security and deployment cost. This work calls not only for the application of ideas described within this paper, but also for further investigation into the problems and solutions of BGP security.

Citations