Initialisation

Before running Routinator for the first time, you must prepare its working environment. You do this using the init command. This will prepare both the directory for the local RPKI cache, as well as the Trust Anchor Locator (TAL) directory.

By default, both directories will be located under $HOME/.rpki-cache, but you can change their locations via the command line options --repository-dir and --tal-dir.

TALs provide hints for the trust anchor certificates to be used both to discover and validate all RPKI content. The five TALs — one for each Regional Internet Registry (RIR) — are bundled with Routinator and installed by the init command.

Warning

Using the TAL from ARIN, the RIR for the United States, Canada as well as many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands, requires you to read and accept their Relying Party Agreement before you can use it. Running the init command will provide you with instructions.

routinator init
Before we can install the ARIN TAL, you must have read
and agree to the ARIN Relying Party Agreement (RPA).
It is available at

https://www.arin.net/resources/manage/rpki/rpa.pdf

If you agree to the RPA, please run the command
again with the --accept-arin-rpa option.

Running the init command with the --accept-arin-rpa option will create the TAL directory and copy the five Trust Anchor Locator files into it.

routinator init --accept-arin-rpa

If you decide you cannot agree to the ARIN RPA terms, the --decline-arin-rpa option will install all TALs except the one for ARIN. If, at a later point, you wish to use the ARIN TAL anyway, you can add it to your current installation using the -f flag, to force the installation of all TALs.

Performing a Test Run

To see if Routinator has been initialised correctly and your firewall allows the required connections, it is recommended to perform an initial test run. You can do this by having Routinator print a validated ROA payload (VRP) list with the vrps sub-command, and using -v to increase the log level to INFO to see if Routinator establishes rsync connections as expected.

routinator -v vrps

Now, you can see how Routinator connects to the RPKI trust anchors, downloads the the contents of the repositories to your machine, validates it and produces a list of validated ROA payloads in the default CSV format to standard output. From a cold start, this process will take about two minutes.

routinator -v vrps
rsyncing from rsync://repository.lacnic.net/rpki/.
rsyncing from rsync://rpki.afrinic.net/repository/.
rsyncing from rsync://rpki.apnic.net/repository/.
rsyncing from rsync://rpki.ripe.net/ta/.
rsync://rpki.ripe.net/ta: The RIPE NCC Certification Repository is subject to Terms and Conditions
rsync://rpki.ripe.net/ta: See http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/ncc/legal/certification/repository-tc
rsync://rpki.ripe.net/ta:
Found valid trust anchor rsync://rpki.ripe.net/ta/ripe-ncc-ta.cer. Processing.
rsyncing from rsync://rpki.ripe.net/repository/.
Found valid trust anchor rsync://rpki.afrinic.net/repository/AfriNIC.cer. Processing.
rsyncing from rsync://rpki.arin.net/repository/.
Found valid trust anchor rsync://rpki.arin.net/repository/arin-rpki-ta.cer. Processing.
Found valid trust anchor rsync://rpki.apnic.net/repository/apnic-rpki-root-iana-origin.cer. Processing.
rsyncing from rsync://rpki.apnic.net/member_repository/.
Found valid trust anchor rsync://repository.lacnic.net/rpki/lacnic/rta-lacnic-rpki.cer. Processing.
rsync://rpki.ripe.net/repository: The RIPE NCC Certification Repository is subject to Terms and Conditions
rsync://rpki.ripe.net/repository: See http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/ncc/legal/certification/repository-tc
rsync://rpki.ripe.net/repository:
rsyncing from rsync://rpkica.twnic.tw/rpki/.
rsyncing from rsync://rpki-repository.nic.ad.jp/ap/.
rsyncing from rsync://rpki.cnnic.cn/rpki/.
Summary:
afrinic: 338 valid ROAs, 459 VRPs.
lacnic: 2435 valid ROAs, 7042 VRPs.
apnic: 3186 valid ROAs, 21934 VRPs.
ripe: 10780 valid ROAs, 56907 VRPs.
arin: 4964 valid ROAs, 6621 VRPs.
ASN,IP Prefix,Max Length,Trust Anchor
AS43289,2a03:f80:373::/48,48,ripe
AS14464,131.109.128.0/17,17,arin
AS17806,114.130.5.0/24,24,apnic
AS59587,151.232.192.0/21,21,ripe
AS13335,172.68.30.0/24,24,arin
AS6147,190.40.0.0/14,24,lacnic
...