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The annoying Noisy BGP Speakers#

LACNIC 45 digest Program Adjacent pick 25–28 May 2026

Slides Recording

Alejandro Acosta and Elisa Peirano (both LACNIC, per slide contact addresses)

Play the recording: The annoying Noisy BGP Speakers

  • Why: Quantifies BGP update noise with a simple, reproducible per-ASN metric — useful for NOC hygiene, route-server operations, and for grounding "BGP churn" conversations with peers in data.
  • What: Processing 2.2M+ BGP messages from RRC24 (Montevideo) and RRC15 (São Paulo), covering 86,398 ASNs and ~1.44M IPv4/IPv6 prefixes: the mean noise index is ~1,547 updates per announced prefix versus a median of 234 — noise is heavily concentrated in a small set of participants; IPv6 is measurably noisier than IPv4; and most of the noisiest ASNs belong to organizations outside the LAC region. Causes cited: software bugs, misconfigurations (notably missing update-source), and hardware/DoS-induced session instability. Mitigations: route filtering, correct update-source, prefix limits on peers, dampening, and moderate timer tuning.
  • How: A per-ASN noise factor (updates per announced prefix) following the SIDN Labs "Noisy Neighbours" methodology (CNSM 2025), computed with Python (mrtparser, pandas, numpy) against NRO delegated-extended files for country mapping.
  • Where applicable: IXP/route-server operators and any NOG doing BGP hygiene; methodology is reproducible from public collectors. Country-level conclusions are vantage-point-specific (two LAC collectors).