How BGP ORIGIN Manipulation Distorts Internet Traffic Routing
BGP ORIGIN attribute manipulation and its impact on the Internet
We investigated the BGP ORIGIN attribute and discovered that roughly 70% of observed paths have their values altered from the original setting. While RFC4271 forbids changing this attribute, many transit providers rewrite it to IGP to attract more traffic and revenue. Our experiments across Cloudflare's peering locations reveal a widespread, revenue-driven arms race where operators prioritize profit over protocol compliance, fundamentally impacting how data flows across the Internet.
Rather than waiting for competitors to resume RFC compliance, network operators are more likely to quickly resort to rewriting the ORIGIN simply to level the playing field.