Renesys Corp

A real-time analysis of Internet routing

Renesys’ flagship product, Routing Intelligence^® (RI), provides a unique view of your own Internet assets—from outside your firewall looking back. Now you can see yourself just as the distributed Internet does: in real-time, from every continent.

Routing Intelligence analyzes global routing data—root causes of changing data routes, network hijackings, outages, etc.—then displays the results in clear, concise formats. Network operators can use this in-depth analysis to maintain their global routing state, and their customers’ access. Adverse events are identified and resolved—before customers are affected.

Core technologies

• The Internet’s most comprehensive and detailed connectivity map is analyzed, interpreted and displayed in plain language and practical graphs.
• Data is collected continuously; routing analysis and alarming is delayed by 60 seconds—even when alarming on a majority of the Internet.
• Diverse views of worldwide routing tables make it easy to understand complicated routing events. Views spanning various time periods (seconds to months) and geographies are correlated and displayed.
• Graphical navigation of all AS routing adjacencies is animated, making observation of Internet backbone connectivity (during the preceding 28 days) dynamic and straightforward.
• Forensic analysis can be performed on routing events back to January 1, 2002.
• Analyzed data is portable. It can be exported in common data formats for additional processing or integration into other applications and tools.

Additional information

• Request a Demo

Features

Dashboard

The state of the global Internet is yours to peruse—delivered right to your desktop. Set up your dashboard to suit your preferences, then check targeted reports and monitor important events such as outages and hijackings.

• Global Internet connectivity map geographically pinpoints changing instability.
• Dynamic growth of worldwide routing table is updated continuously.

Autonomous System analysis

You can navigate with ease through the maze of Internet backbone network adjacencies with Renesys’ interactive star graph. Each backbone network is color-coded for easy identification and hot-linked to its connectivity graph. Click on any AS to display its interconnections from another viewpoint.

To help you find AS adjacencies quickly, the data is also detailed in tabular form. You can sort it by parameters such as AS number, name or time, and even export it for additional analysis.

You can also detail, in hierarchical order, all the networks (prefixes) within an AS. This will reveal the entire downstream network infrastructure for your review.

Network analysis

You can analyze routing data for one or multiple networks (prefixes), over any specified time frame back to January, 2002, with a wide range of practical tools.

• Routing summary includes outages, instability and hijacking.
• Animated routing diagram depicts current routing connections over time.
• Raw BGP routing data.
• BGP route change data shows routes before and after latest changes.
• Status of worldwide routing over time.
• Graphical representation of local and global Internet route events.

Network alarming

A variety of alarms can be set for any number of specified Internet networks. They’re delivered as syslog messages, SNMP traps, e-mails, etc, and you receive them in 30-60 seconds. You can set alerts on the following alarms:

• Active Alarm: a transient prefix is advertised or a new network is connected.
• Inactive Alarm: possibility of disconnected networks.
• Suspicious AS Origin: possible hijackings.
• Suspicious AS Upstream: edge network using a new service provider; unauthorized access to the Internet through your prefix.
• Degradation: lets you examine the cause and determine which AS has originated the route.
• Suspicious Prefix: a new prefix is announced by your AS and detects route leakage.
• Unstable and Instability Threshold: unstable network routes.

Benefits

Instant BGP Expertise

Empower your core round-the-clock network operations team with sophisticated BGP analysis tools. Suspicious events that once seemed too complicated are readily deciphered—you won’t need to call in routing experts for costly after-hours consultation.

Get the results of complex routing analysis in seconds. No endless script writing and debugging—and possibly missing the cause of a major routing event while you’re at it.

Beef up your existing inside-the-firewall tools with a comprehensive network visualization from the outside.

Alarm for the unexpected

• Detect and fix BGP network issues before your customers are affected.
• Assure integrity of your network configuration by setting an alarm for unauthorized changes.
• Detect misconfigurations in real-time.
• Protect against hostile attacks and configuration blunders outside your network.

Internet event correlation

You can combine historic routing data with other data for comprehensive forensic analysis. Determine root causes of fluctuations in e-commerce revenue, user authentication, user session terminations, performance issues, etc.

Use Cases

CDN Alarming: Assure your customers’ global availability

PhantomCDN is getting odd inaccessibility complaints from YourShow (a content provider client) even though everything looks great inside their network and from various external points. Then, as suddenly as the outage started, it stops.

Dana, Phantom’s senior engineer, doesn’t like unsolved events, even if they resolve themselves. She stays into the evening going through her checklist, step by step. Nothing. Dana doesn’t believe in ghosts. So, who’s she gonna call? Renesys. A few minutes Googling suggests these guys have the know-how she needs.

And they do. Within minutes, Renesys has the strange, but not-as-unlikely-as-you might-think answer. For a few hours that afternoon MissingLink Networks, one of Phantom's NSPs, had been originating the same network as Phantom’s other NSP!

How come? One of MissingLink’s clients had taken a few shortcuts (so they thought) instituting a global upgrade. Network overload! But they thought they were a DOS victim and started complaining. Before MissingLink really knew what was happening, they black-holed all traffic from the source network to all their customers. Then they announced the black-holed network as their own and started originating a network that actually belongs to Phantom’s other NSP!

OurShow and Phantom suffered collateral damage from a series of mistakes made by MissingLink and its client. Dana will be ready next time. Routing Intelligence Alarms will warn her within 30 seconds about any suspicious activity—inside or outside her network.

Network Forensics: Attribute and solve problems

Super M Credit Card’s backbone Internet connection suddenly starts flapping—on Black Friday! This is no time for downtime! It’s the busiest day of the year for retailers (and credit card companies). The operations team quickly resets their Internet Connection links and gets the network back on track.

After a long holiday weekend with his in-laws, Super M’s routing expert, Clark, ambles in on Monday morning. Wham! Management is firing orders at him left and right! Find out what happened Friday—fast! And make sure it doesn’t happen again!

So what happened last Friday? Network ops did a seat-of-the-pants reset, so there are no router logs to consult. Clever Clark opens up Renesys Routing Intelligence. He is about to become a hero. A thorough forensic analysis of network events prior to Friday’s failure soon reveals the root cause of the flapping: heavy congestion due to heavy shopping. Clark saves the day with an ingenious fix—and time to spare. Next weekend’s power shoppers can shop ’til they drop!