The RouteViews project was founded in 1995 by the Advanced Network Technology Center (ANTC) at the University of Oregon. In the early days of initial deployment of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the mission of RouteViews was to provide Internet operators with a real-time, global perspective of BGP routing information. BGP is the global inter-domain routing protocol used to exchange reachability information to route traffic across the Internet. RouteViews has continuously archived Internet routing data, second by second, for IPv4 networks since 1997 and for IPv6 data since 2003.
The Internet today consists of tens of thousands of interconnected, independently administered networks known as Autonomous Systems (AS). RouteViews provides detailed public views of Internet routing data to help network operators, government agencies, researchers, and educators effectively address issues related to routing stability, security, and performance of the global Internet. Research that leverages RouteViews data spans diverse areas, including the mapping of Internet Autonomous System (AS)-level topology, the inference of AS relationships, the detection and characterization of BGP anomalies (such as hijacks and route leaks), the analysis of routing policies, and even the critical assessment and optimization of the measurement infrastructure itself.
The Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) at the University of Oregon provides technical and operational management of the RouteViews platform. RouteViews is currently funded by two National Science Foundation grant awards and valuable philanthropic contributions from industry partners.
Data Collection and Archival Methodology
RouteViews collects BGP data through direct peering with network operators at Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) or via multi-hop peering arrangements. The primary types of data collected are BGP Routing Information Bases (RIBs), which are snapshots of routing tables, and continuous streams of BGP update messages.
Historical data is meticulously stored in the Multi-Threaded Routing Toolkit (MRT) format, a standard for BGP data, and is made publicly available for download via HTTP, FTP, and rsync from archive.routeviews.org. RIBs are archived approximately every two hours, while update messages are archived every 15 minutes, providing a granular record of routing changes over time. RouteViews data is also available via Looking Glass and API .
More information is available at the RouteViews FAQ .
Operational needs drive the use of RouteViews, while the resulting dataset subsequently fuels academic research. This research, in turn, can provide feedback in the form of improvements or new analysis methods that benefit operators, fostering a virtuous cycle of development and application to improve the Internet routing ecosystem. The high volume of academic citations over the past three decades demonstrates that RouteViews has enabled a vast body of knowledge in Internet routing and measurement, establishing it as a cornerstone for empirical studies.
If you utilize RouteViews data for publications of any kind, please acknowledge value of this information for your research.
For citations, the RouteViews DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is: 10.7264/1y7v-2d90
Future research will continue to leverage the vast datasets provided by RouteViews, with a strong emphasis on applying more sophisticated analytical techniques, including advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence, to extract deeper, more actionable insights. A prominent trend is the ongoing effort to enhance the utility and trustworthiness of BGP data. The symbiotic relationship between the operational needs that drive data collection and the academic research that refines understanding of its utility value propel the evolution of RouteViews as the Internet’s routing landscape continues its dynamic and complex development.
For Network Operators
- Independent visibility into global routing beyond your own Autonomous System.
- Faster troubleshooting of reachability issues, misconfigurations, and routing leaks.
- Validation of routing policies, upstream information, and effectiveness of designated Route Origin Authorizations (ROA).
- Forensics and post-incident analysis after outages, DDoS events, hijacks, or forced Internet shutdowns.
- Peering Management for network operators to verify routing policy (updates/changes), as well as to verify how your routes have propagated (or not) globally.
- Compare Transit and Peering Paths, plus discover opportunities for enhanced peering supported by PeeringDB.
For Researchers
- Open, high-quality datasets covering nearly 30 years of global Internet routing activity.
- Multiple vantage points for studying BGP dynamics, Internet topology, and interconnection behavior.
- Ideal for machine learning, anomaly detection, security analysis, and modeling the evolution of the Internet.
For Educators & Students
- A rich real-world dataset for teaching about Internet routing principles, network operations, and the global Internet architecture.
- Tools and data archives that ground theoretical concepts in operational reality.
For the Global Internet Community
- Greater visibility into how the global Internet routing system functions, with BGP data contributed by network operators from hundreds of different vantage points.
- Data that supports policy discussions, routing security improvements, standards development, and community collaboration across Network Operator Groups (NOGs), Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and Internet peering forums worldwide.
