MANRS in 2021: A Year of Growth and Change

The world needs a secure and resilient Internet, especially in the face of an ongoing pandemic still driving more activity and more people online. Here, we’ll share a few highlights from the MANRS Community Report 2021 and outline some of our plans for 2022.

We grew from 588 total MANRS participants at the beginning of the year to 750 participants as of 31 December 2021. MANRS participants manged 779 autonomous systems from nearly 90 countries across six continents.

We launched a fourth MANRS program for equipment vendors to help reduce common routing threats by making sure that network equipment, like routers and switches, has the right features and support. Founding participants included global leaders Arista, Cisco, Huawei, Juniper, and Nokia.

The MANRS Ambassadors and Fellowship Program ran its second edition last year, bringing together five ambassadors and 13 fellows from across the globe to train diverse communities on good routing practices, research ways to secure routing, and survey the global policy landscape.

Participants in the CDN and Cloud Program – including Akamai, Amazon, Azion, Cloudflare, Comcast, Facebook/Meta, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Verisign, and Vultr – took it upon themselves to raise the bar to make the program stronger for an even more secure Internet. Upon the MANRS community’s adoption, new requirements became part of the program.

Our governance structure also grew. The Advisory Group worked with the community to develop the MANRS Community Charter, which provides guiding principles for the future governance of MANRS.

In accordance with the Charter, the Advisory Group transitioned to a nine-member Steering Committee comprised of individuals elected by the MANRS community to lead the initiative towards collective responsibility for the resilience and security of the Internet’s global routing system. The election attracted 34 high-caliber and diverse candidates, a testament to the community’s strength.

The year did not come without its challenges, of course. We saw some major routing incidents like the Facebook outage in October, and the massive BGP hijack involving Vodafone Idea Ltd. in April, and the major route leak in February. We also continued to see slow adoption of Route Origin Authorizations (ROAs), the first step any network must take before they deploy Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), a security framework. The events underline the need for more efforts in boosting awareness and action in terms of routing security controls, such as RPKI.

This year, MANRS will continue to transition to a self-governed community of network operators, IXPs, CDNs, cloud providers, equipment vendors, and partner organizations that drives global adoption of MANRS actions and improvements in routing security.

We will also continue to offer leadership initiatives, such as the MANRS Ambassador and Fellows Program, and to build strategic partnerships to expand our outreach and engagement. Plans are also afoot to continue improving the MANRS Observatory.

To achieve all these, MANRS will need all your support to continue to grow and strengthen the community. Join us in securing the global Internet for everyone.

Read our report and join us for an even better 2022!