CICI:TCR: Routing Operations Observational Technology: Building to Enable Education and Research (ROOTBEER)

About This Grant

The ROOTBEER award ensures that Internet routing policies align with the security and integrity goals of the U.S. science ecosystem. Research and education (R&E) networks offer specialized capacity to their member institutions, enabling data-intensive collaborative research across scientific disciplines. To support seamless workflows for domain scientists, R&E networks typically prioritize R&E routes ahead of commodity Internet routes. Although optimal for scientific collaboration, this approach introduces vulnerabilities to the integrity of the underlying routing infrastructure for two related reasons. First, prioritizing R&E paths increases the importance of ensuring correctness in all R&E router configurations. Even minor misconfigurations have resulted in significant route leaks, inadvertently transmitting sensitive U.S. scientific traffic through unintended international routes. Second, academic networks operate under constrained budgets with limited staffing, and many of them have yet to implement routing security innovations recommended as best practices for over a decade. Furthermore, as with many security measures, routing innovations can introduce unforeseen vulnerabilities, creating additional barriers to adoption. ROOTBEER develops and deploys a security-focused routing observatory and operational support system designed to ensure that routing policies are both correct and effective. The observatory leverages recent innovations in network measurement and analytics, providing a rigorous assessment of routing infrastructuresecurity properties otherwise unobservable by external parties. The project is structured into three tasks: measurement and analysis; an operational dashboard; and community engagement. The effort is executed in close collaboration with R&E networks such as Internet2 to ensure maximum effectiveness. Overall, the project facilitates development of a routing security auditing framework that strengthens the ability of network operators to protect the integrity, availability, and performance of U.S. scientific cyberinfrastructure. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.