nlnetlabs-routinator/README.md

# Routinator

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Introducing ‘Routinator 3000,’ RPKI relying party software written in Rust.
If you have any feedback, we would love to hear from you. Don’t hesitate to
[create an issue on Github](https://github.com/NLnetLabs/routinator/issues/new)
or post a message on our [RPKI mailing list](https://lists.nlnetlabs.nl/mailman/listinfo/rpki).
You can lean more about Routinator and RPKI technology by reading our documentation on
[Read the Docs](https://rpki.readthedocs.io/en/latest/routinator/index.html).

## Quick Start with Cargo

Assuming you have a newly installed Debian or Ubuntu machine, you will need to
install rsync, the C toolchain and Rust. You can then install Routinator and
start it up as an RTR server listening on 127.0.0.1 port 3323 and HTTP on
port 8323:

```bash
apt install rsync build-essential
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
source ~/.cargo/env
cargo install --locked routinator
routinator init
# Follow instructions provided
routinator server --rtr 127.0.0.1:3323 --http 127.0.0.1:8323
```

If you have an older version of Rust and Routinator, you can update using

```bash
rustup update
cargo install --locked --force routinator
```

Routinator 0.7.1 and newer are shipped with updated Trust Anchor Locators
(TALs). Once you have upgraded from an older version of Routinator, make 
sure to install the new TALs using

```
routinator init --force
```

## Quick Start with Debian and Ubuntu Packages

### Disclaimer
> These packages are provided on a best effort basis as a convenience for our community until such time as equivalent official operating system repository provided packages become available.

Assuming you have a machine running a recent Debian or Ubuntu distribution, you
can install Routinator from our [software package
repository](https://packages.nlnetlabs.nl). To use this repository, add the line
below that corresponds to your operating system to  your `/etc/apt/sources.list`
or `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/`

```bash
deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.nlnetlabs.nl/linux/debian/ stretch main
deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.nlnetlabs.nl/linux/debian/ buster main
deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.nlnetlabs.nl/linux/ubuntu/ xenial main
deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.nlnetlabs.nl/linux/ubuntu/ bionic main
deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.nlnetlabs.nl/linux/ubuntu/ focal main
```
Then run the following commands.

```bash
sudo apt update && apt-get install -y gnupg2
wget -qO- https://packages.nlnetlabs.nl/aptkey.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt update
```

You can then install, initialise, enable and start Routinator by running these
commands. Note that `routinator-init` is slightly different than the command
used with Cargo.

```bash
sudo apt install routinator
sudo routinator-init
# Follow instructions provided
sudo systemctl enable --now routinator
```

By default, Routinator will start the RTR server on port 3323 and the HTTP
server on port 8323. These, and other values can be changed in the
configuration file located in `/etc/routinator/routinator.conf`. You can check
the status of Routinator with `sudo systemctl status  routinator` and view the
logs with `sudo journalctl --unit=routinator`.

## Quick Start with Docker

Due to the impracticality of complying with the ARIN TAL distribution terms
in an unsupervised Docker environment, prior to launching the container it
is necessary to first review and agree to the ARIN TAL terms available at
https://www.arin.net/resources/rpki/tal.html. If you agree to the terms,
you can let the Routinator Docker image install the TALs into a mounted
volume that is later reused for the server:

```bash
# Create a Docker volume to persist TALs in
sudo docker volume create routinator-tals
# Review the ARIN terms.
# Run a disposable container to install TALs.
sudo docker run --rm -v routinator-tals:/home/routinator/.rpki-cache/tals \
    nlnetlabs/routinator init -f --accept-arin-rpa
# Launch the final detached container named 'routinator' exposing RTR on
# port 3323 and HTTP on port 9556
sudo docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped --name routinator -p 3323:3323 \
     -p 9556:9556 -v routinator-tals:/home/routinator/.rpki-cache/tals \
     nlnetlabs/routinator
```

For additional isolation, Routinator container is known to successfully run
under [gVisor](https://gvisor.dev/).

## RPKI

The Resource Public Key Infrastructure provides cryptographically signed
statements about the association of Internet routing resources. In
particular, it allows the holder of an IP address prefix to publish which
AS number will be the origin of BGP route announcements for it.

All of these statements are published in a distributed repository.
Routinator will collect these statements into a local copy, validate
their signatures, and construct a list of associations between IP address
prefixes and AS numbers. It provides this information to routers supporting
the RPKI-RTR protocol or can output it in a number of useful formats.

## System Requirements

Routinator is designed to be lean and is capable of running on minimalist
hardware, such as a Raspberry Pi. Running it on a system with 1GB of
available RAM and 1GB of available disk space will give the global RPKI
data set enough room to grow for the foreseeable future. A powerful CPU is
not required, as cryptographic validation currently takes less than two
seconds on an average system.

## Getting Started

There’s two things you need for Routinator: rsync and Rust and a C toolc…
There are three things you need for Routinator: rsync, a C toolchain and
Rust. You need rsync because some RPKI repositories currently use this
as its means of distribution. Some of the cryptographic primitives
used by the Routinator require a C toolchain, so you need that, too. You
need Rust because that’s what Routinator has been written in.

Since this currently is an early version, we decided not to distribute
binary packages just yet. But don’t worry, getting Rust and building
packages with it is easy.

### rsync

Currently, Routinator requires the `rsync` executable to be in your path.
We are not quite sure which particular version you need at the very least,
but whatever is being shipped with current Linux and \*BSD distributions
and macOS should be fine.

On Windows, Routinator requires the `rsync` version that comes with
[Cygwin](https://www.cygwin.com/) – make sure to select rsync during the
installation phase. And yes, Routinator totally works on Windows, too.

If you don’t have rsync, please head to http://rsync.samba.org/

### C Toolchain

Some of the libraries Routinator depends on require a C toolchain to be
present. Your system probably has some easy way to install the minimum
set of packages to build from C sources. For example, `apt install
build-essential` will install everything you need on Debian/Ubuntu.

If you are unsure, try to run `cc` on a command line and if there’s a
complaint about missing input files, you are probably good to go.

On some older systems, the toolchain may not be up-to-date enough. We
are collecting information as it comes up in a
[separate document](doc/misc.md). One such instance is
[CentOS 6](doc/misc.md#building-on-centos-6).

### Rust

The Rust compiler runs on, and compiles to, a great number of platforms.
The official [Rust Platform Support](https://forge.rust-lang.org/platform-support.html)
page provides an overview of the various platforms and support levels.

While some system distributions include Rust as system packages,
Routinator relies on a relatively new version of Rust, currently 1.42 or
newer. We therefore suggest to use the canonical Rust installation via a
tool called ``rustup``.

To install ``rustup`` and Rust, simply do:

```bash
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
```

or, alternatively, get the file, have a look and then run it manually.
Follow the instructions to get rustup and cargo, the rust build tool, into
your path.

You can update your Rust installation later by simply running

```bash
rustup update
```

To get started you need Cargo's bin directory ($HOME/.cargo/bin) in your PATH
environment variable. To configure your current shell, run

```bash
source $HOME/.cargo/env
```

## Building

The easiest way to get Routinator is to leave it to cargo by saying

```bash
cargo install --locked routinator
```

If you want to try the main branch from the repository instead of a
release version, you can run

```bash
cargo install --git https://github.com/NLnetLabs/routinator.git --branch main
```

If you want to update an installed version, you run the same command but
add the `-f` flag (aka force) to approve overwriting the installed
version.

The command will build Routinator and install it in the same directory
that cargo itself lives in (likely `$HOME/.cargo/bin`).
Which means Routinator will be in your path, too.

## Using native TLS instead of Rustls

Routinator by default uses [Rustls](https://github.com/ctz/rustls) which in
most cases is fine. However, if needed you can instead use your system native
TLS implementation with Routinator like so:

**Cargo:**

Build Routinator with the `native-tls` feature enabled:

```bash
git clone --branch vX.Y.Z --depth 1 https://github.com/NLnetLabs/routinator.git
cd routinator
cargo build --release --features socks,native-tls
```

**Docker:**

Specify a `native-tls` image tag when running the container:

```bash
sudo docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped --name routinator -p 3323:3323 \
     -p 9556:9556 -v routinator-tals:/home/routinator/.rpki-cache/tals \
     nlnetlabs/routinator:native-tls
```

## Running

All functions of Routinator are accessible on the command line via
sub-commands.

The first thing you need to do before running Routinator is
prepare its working environment via the

```bash
routinator init
```

command. This will prepare
both the directory for the local RPKI cache as well as the TAL directory.
By default both directories will be located under `$HOME/.rpki-cache`, but
you can change their locations via command line options.

TALs provide hints for the trust anchor certificates to be used both to
discover and validate all RPKI content. The five TALs that are necessary
for RPKI are bundled with Routinator and installed by the `routinator init` command.

However, the one from the North American RIR ARIN requires you to agree to
their Relying Party Agreement before you can use it. Running the `routinator init`
command will provide you with instructions where to find the agreement and
how to express your acceptance of its terms.

Once you have successfully prepared the working environment, your can run
Routinator in one of two possible modes: printing the
list of valid route origins, also known as _Validated ROA Payload_ or VRP,
or providing the service for routers and other clients to access this list
via HTTP or a dedicated protocol known as RPKI-to-Router protocol or RTR.

To have Routinator print the list, you say

```bash
routinator vrps
```

When you first run this command, Routinator will download the entire RPKI
repository to your machine which will take a while. Later, Routinator only needs
to check for changes so subsequent runs will be quicker. Once it has gathered
all data, it will validate it and produce a long list of AS numbers and
prefixes.

Information about additional command line arguments is available via the
`-h` option or you can look at the more detailed man page via the `man`
sub-command:

```bash
routinator man
```

It is also available online in the
[documentation](https://rpki.readthedocs.io/en/latest/routinator/manual-page.html).

## Feeding a Router with RPKI-RTR

Routinator supports RPKI-RTR as specified in RFC 8210 as well as the older
version from RFC 6810. It will act as an RTR server if you start it with
the `routinator server` command.

You can specify the address(es) to listen on via the `--rtr`
option. If you don’t, it will still start but not listen on anything. This
may seem a bit odd, but this way, you can keep your local repository copy
up-to-date for faster use of the `routinator vrps` command.

So, in order to run Routinator as an RTR server listening on port 3323 on
both 192.0.2.13 and 2001:0DB8::13, run

```bash
routinator server --rtr 192.0.2.13:3323 --rtr [2001:0DB8::13]:3323
```

By default, the repository will be updated and re-validated every ten minutes.
You can change this via the `--refresh` option and specify the interval between
re-validations in seconds. That is, if you rather have Routinator validate every
fifteen minutes, the above command becomes

```bash
routinator server --rtr 192.0.2.13:3323 --rtr [2001:0DB8::13]:3323 --refresh=900
```

## Secure Transports for RPKI-RTR

[RFC6810](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6810#page-17) defines a number of
secure transports for RPKI-RTR that can be used for communication between
a router and a RPKI relying party.

Documentation on configuring secure transports with Routinator can be
found [here](doc/transports.md).

## Configuration Files

Routinator can take its configuration from a file, too. You can specify
such a configuration file via the `-c` option. If you don’t, Routinator
will check if there is a file `$HOME/.routinator.conf` and if it exists,
use it. If it doesn’t exist and there is no `-c` option, default values
are used.

The configuration file is a TOML file. Its entries are named similarly to
the command line options. Details about the available entries and there
meaning can be found in the [manual page](https://rpki.readthedocs.io/en/latest/routinator/manual-page.html).
In addition, a complete sample configuration file showing all the default
values can be found in the repository at [etc/routinator.conf](https://github.com/NLnetLabs/routinator/blob/main/etc/routinator.conf.example).

## Local Exceptions

If you would like to add exceptions to the validated RPKI data in the
form of local filters and additions, you can specify this in a file
using JSON notation according to the [SLURM] standard. You can find
two example files in the repository at `/test/slurm`. Use the `-x` option
to refer to your file with local exceptions.

Routinator will re-read that file on every validation run, so you can
simply update the file whenever your exceptions change.

[SLURM]: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8416

## Monitoring

Monitoring a Routinator instance is possible by enabling the integrated
[Prometheus](https://prometheus.io/) exporter using the `--http`
configuration option or command line parameter.

Port [9556](https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/wiki/Default-port-allocations)
is allocated for this use. A Routinator instance with monitoring on this
port can be launched so:

```bash
routinator server --rtr 192.0.2.13:3323 --rtr [2001:0DB8::13]:3323 --http 192.0.2.13:9556
```

A [sample Grafana dashboard](https://grafana.com/grafana/dashboards/11922) is 
available to get started.