MANRS Community Report 2022: Significant Milestones and Broadening Engagement

The MANRS project achieved several significant milestones in 2022. 

We grew from 750 total MANRS participants at the beginning of the year to 886 participants as of 31 December 2022. We saw the adoption of resource public key infrastructure (RPKI)—a key tool in stopping route leaks and hijacks—increase to 77% and ROV implementation to 10% amongst MANRS participants, while we observed an overall decline in routing incidents.

Globally in 2022, efforts to improve the security and resilience of the Internet’s routing system also passed a significant milestone with more than 50% of advertised Internet Protocol version six (IPv6) address space having valid route origin authorizations (ROAs). This means that, for the first time, the majority of announced IPv6 address space is secured with RPKI. While we cannot claim these milestones are a direct result of MANRS, it demonstrates a growing sense of shared responsibility for improving routing security.

Even though ROA adoption is picking up in some regions, the adoption rate is generally low. While the global valid ROA count increased by about 7% from 35% in December 2021 to 42% in December 2022, it is not yet good enough to secure global routing.

MANRS Community Report 2022 

The recently published MANRS Community Report 2022, outlines our efforts to continue to engage diverse audiences, including policymakers, researchers, and security experts, such as the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) community. 

Action requires behavioral change, which comes from acknowledging the consequences of not putting in responsible routing security measures. The MANRS community is driving this behavioral change toward more secure routing. 

We believe customer demand can be a driving force in increasing routing security. To this end, we launched the MANRS+ Working Group in 2022 to explore the idea of creating a second, elevated tier of MANRS participation for organizations that comply with more stringent requirements and auditing. 

Our governance also strengthened with the successful election of three members in the second election of the Steering Committee in November. 

Looking Ahead 

In 2023, we have set the following targets as we continue to advocate participation among network operators, IXPs, CDNs, cloud providers, and equipment vendors, and their uptake in implementing routing security measures: 

• Increase conformance of MANRS participants by 10%
• Encourage five MANRS participants to join the Internet Society as organization members
• Grow the MANRS community with the addition of 10 organization members and 10 IXPs

We will also strengthen and add best practices, including developing these into recognized standards. As routing security has gained the attention of policymakers, MANRS will also be monitoring and providing inputs where appropriate to regulatory developments as these happen. 

The Internet Society has funded the MANRS initiative since its inception, but now it needs your support to continue to grow and strengthen the routing security community. We are therefore looking for industry sponsors who are interested in supporting the MANRS Observatory, the Mentors and Ambassadors program, and its community events, including the Routing Security Summit. 

If you are a MANRS participant such as a network operator, IXP, CDN, cloud provider, or equipment vendor, please consider becoming an Organization Member of the Internet Society to help us continue to secure the global Internet for everyone!

Read the MANRS Community Report 2022 and support our work to secure Internet routing for everyone.