Overview of the IRR

  • Introduction
  • Obtaining IRR Data
  • IRRToolSet

    • Introduction

     The Internet Routing Registry (IRR) is a distributed routing database development effort. Data from the Internet Routing Registry may be used by anyone worldwide to help debug, configure, and engineer Internet routing and addressing. The IRR provides a mechanism for validating the contents of BGP announcement messages or mapping an origin AS number to a list of networks.

    The IRR emerged early in 1995, a time when providers worldwide were preparing for the end of the NSFNET Backbone Service and the birth of the commercial Internet. A current list of databases in the IRR can be found here.

    Obtaining IRR Data

    Routing data from the entire global registry may be obtained by entering 'whois' commands such as: 
    	  whois -h whois.radb.net <network_IP>
	  whois -h whois.radb.net AS<Autonomous_System_Number>
    You can also obtain IRR data through FTP from ftp://ftp.radb.net/radb/dbase or access it indirectly through the use of free user tools.

    IRRToolSet

    The University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (ISI) has developed a set of freely available software tools that allows ISPs to generate router configurations directly off information in the Internet Routing Registry. The toolset includes a policy evaluator and router configuration generator as well as CIDR Advisor, a tool that evaluates the aggregation ranges associated with a routing domain, in order to minimize routing table size.

    The IRRToolSet is now available from ISC at the IRRToolSet project page.

    The RADb is operated by Merit Network Inc.
    1000 Oakbrook Drive Suite 200
    Ann Arbor, MI 48104-6794
    734-764-9430 db-admin@radb.net