AS-Level BGP Community Usage Classification
Thomas Krenc, Robert Beverly, Georgios Smaragdakis

TL;DR
This paper introduces a novel passive algorithm to identify which ASes add or remove BGP communities, enhancing understanding of network operator strategies and BGP behavior at the AS level.
Contribution
We develop and validate the first algorithm to infer BGP community tagging and cleaning behaviors at the AS level using only BGP update data.
Findings
Over 13,000 ASes classified with tagging/cleaning behavior
Algorithm achieves over 90% accuracy in real-world validation
Provides a public resource for BGP community behavior analysis
Abstract
BGP communities are a popular mechanism used by network operators for traffic engineering, blackholing, and to realize network policies and business strategies. In recent years, many research works have contributed to our understanding of how BGP communities are utilized, as well as how they can reveal secondary insights into real-world events such as outages and security attacks. However, one fundamental question remains unanswered: "Which ASes tag announcements with BGP communities and which remove communities in the announcements they receive?" A grounded understanding of where BGP communities are added or removed can help better model and predict BGP-based actions in the Internet and characterize the strategies of network operators. In this paper we develop, validate, and share data from the first algorithm that can infer BGP community tagging and cleaning behavior at the…
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