July 24, 2026
Route drama goes full chaos
BGP ORIGIN attribute manipulation and its impact on the Internet
Internet traffic may be getting quietly rigged — and commenters are not shocked
TLDR: Researchers say a supposedly fixed Internet routing label gets altered far more often than expected, which can steer traffic for profit or advantage. Commenters were mostly unsurprised, calling it old-school provider games — while also joking that the explainer link and even the article seemed to disappear mid-discussion.
The big reveal here is deliciously nerdy and a little alarming: researchers found that a basic Internet routing label — basically a tiny signal that helps decide which road your data takes — gets changed surprisingly often after it leaves home. In fact, they say about 70% of the paths they observed had a different value than the one originally set, even though the rulebook says that label shouldn’t be rewritten. Why does that matter? Because changing it can make traffic flow through one network instead of another, which can mean more money, more leverage, and a whole lot of quiet Internet gamesmanship.
And the comment section’s vibe? Half “of course they’re doing this,” half “wait, where did the article go?” One old-school network admin basically shrugged and said this kind of BGP — the behind-the-scenes system that steers Internet traffic — drama has been going on for ages, especially when money got tight and providers started playing “petty games” with routes. That gave the whole thread a smoky back-room energy: less shocking scandal, more everybody knew but nobody said it out loud.
Then came the comedy. One commenter tried to help by posting a video explainer, only for someone else to immediately report the link was dead. Another thought the article itself had vanished after getting a 404 on refresh, which is objectively incredible timing for a story about the Internet’s reliability. Meanwhile, one blunt commenter called anyone who doesn’t reset this behavior at the border “weird,” bringing the thread’s strongest hot take: if this is normal, maybe normal is the problem.
Key Points
- •The article reports that about 70% of observed BGP paths had an ORIGIN value different from the one set by the originating Autonomous System.
- •ORIGIN is a mandatory BGP attribute with three values: IGP (0), EGP (1), and INCOMPLETE (2), indicating how a route entered BGP.
- •Across routes visible from RIPE RIS and RouteViews, 89.8% used IGP, 3.5% used EGP, and 6.7% used INCOMPLETE.
- •When Local Preference and AS_PATH length are equal, routers prefer the route with the lower ORIGIN value, making ORIGIN changes consequential for path selection.
- •The article shows that transit providers can rewrite ORIGIN to IGP to attract traffic, despite RFC4271 guidance that the attribute should not be changed by other speakers.