RADb: The Routing Assets DatabaseMerit and Internet RoutingMerit's network routing experience dates back to the early 1970's with the development of its in-house "Internodal Protocol" for its Michigan backbone network. In the 1980's, Merit adapted its network to route the standards-based Internet Protocol. With the awarding of the NSFNET contract in 1987, Merit broadened the scope of its routing research and development to include interdomain routing. In particular, Merit played an active role in the development and deployment of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) on the Internet. More recent initiatives have included the development of Route Server technology as part of the Routing Arbiter project, leadership of the GateD Consortium, and the NSF sponsored Internet Performance, Measurement and Analysis project. NextHop Technologies, a Merit spin-off company, grew out of the GateD consortium activity. The RADb Merit developed the Routing Assets Database (RADb) in the early 1990's as part of the NSF-funded Routing Arbiter Project. The RADb is a public registry of routing information for networks in the Internet. You can access the Routing Assets Database (RADb) at http://www.radb.net/ Hundreds of organizations that operate networks—including ISPs, universities, and business enterprises— publicly publish, or register, their routing policy and route announcements in the RADb to facilitate the operation of the Internet. Organizations throughout the world use the information in the RADb to troubleshoot routing problems, automatically configure backbone routers, generate access lists, and perform network planning. Any organization worldwide may register in the RADb for a fee of $250 per year and any Internet user may query the RADb at no cost. Currently, the RADb receives about 150,000 queries per day from over 7,000 unique hosts. More than 1,800 organizations have registered their routing information in the RADb, with new organizations registering every day. Routing Policy Specification Language Networking R&D has been instrumental in updating the Routing Policy Specification Language (RPSL), which serves as the underlying standard for the world's routing registries, including the RADb. Recent work includes the RPSLng specification which updates RPSL to support IPv6 and multicast. The RADb supports the RPSLng specification. |