Multi-Threaded Routing Toolkit (MRT) Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Routing Information Export Format with Geo-Location Extensions
Extracted elements (16)
Coordinates are stored as IEEE 754 single precision floats (32 bits) in WGS84 datum decimal degrees format, with NAN used to signal that a location is private rather than omitting the field, preserving a fixed-size record structure while accommodating privacy.
The extension is defined as an optional addition to the MRT TABLE_DUMP_V2 format rather than a new top-level MRT type, allowing existing MRT tooling to continue operating while new consumers can opt in to geo-location awareness.
The Collector BGP ID, Peer Count, Peer Type, and Peer BGP ID fields in GEO_PEER_TABLE reuse definitions from the TABLE_DUMP_V2 PEER_INDEX_TABLE format in RFC 6396, ensuring structural compatibility.
Location information derived from a GEOPRIV location object with more restrictive privacy rules MUST NOT be included in an MRT geo-location record unless non-technical measures enforce the constraints on use.
The Collector Latitude and Collector Longitude MUST NOT be a mix of WGS84 datum coordinates and NAN values; both must be either valid coordinates or both NAN.
The latitude and longitude MAY be a Not A Number (NAN) per IEEE 754 for situations where the geo-location of the collector or peer is considered private.
The order of the Peer Entries in the GEO_PEER_TABLE MUST match the order and number as existing in the PEER_INDEX_TABLE.
The Peer Latitude and Peer Longitude MUST NOT be a mix of WGS84 datum coordinates and NAN values for a single peer.
Because the MRT geo-location format does not support GEOPRIV privacy rules, each location entry in an MRT object is assigned default privacy rules per RFC 4119: retransmission-allowed true, retention-expires 100 years from timestamp, with empty ruleset-reference and note-well.
Operators of BGP collectors and BGP peers should consider their own privacy and security concerns before supplying geographical coordinates, especially if the resulting data is made public; special attention should be given to physical security of an organization.
GEO_PEER_TABLE is a new subtype (number 7) defined for the TABLE_DUMP_V2 MRT format that includes geo-location information for a BGP collector and its peers in WGS84 format.
IANA registered GEO_PEER_TABLE as subtype number 7 in the TABLE_DUMP_V2 Type subtype code values in the MRT namespace, as defined by RFC 6396.
Geo-location data supplied by a BGP peer can only be taken at face value; a BGP peer may supply coordinates that are purposefully misleading or inaccurate. It is up to the BGP collector whether to include this information or use its own methods to validate it.
It is not recommended that a BGP collector use geographical coordinates not supplied by a BGP peer, as the provenance of externally assigned coordinates cannot be verified.
Each Peer Entry in GEO_PEER_TABLE contains: Peer Type (8-bit), Peer BGP ID (32-bit), Peer Latitude (32-bit single precision float), and Peer Longitude (32-bit single precision float). Coordinates are WGS84 datum decimal degrees.
The GEO_PEER_TABLE record contains: Collector BGP ID (32-bit), Collector Latitude (32-bit single precision float), Collector Longitude (32-bit single precision float), Peer Count (16-bit), and variable-length Peer Entries.