Best Practices for Operating Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) Publication Services

2.1. Requirements Language

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶

Note that the key words are used to stress importance for operations; they are not required as a formal implementation requirement.¶

2.2. Definitions

This document makes use of the following terms:¶

2.3. Acronyms

3.1. Self-Hosted CA and Self-Hosted Repository Considerations

The most common approach for resource holders wishing to make use of the RPKI is to leverage a CA instance hosted and operated by the provider of those resources (e.g., a RIR or a NIR). However, in some specific circumstances (e.g., deployment policy), resource holders might instead choose to deploy and manage a CA themselves. This latter type of CA is commonly referred to as a "self-hosted" or "delegated" CA.¶

If the resource holder chooses to operate their CA in a self-hosted fashion, the holder must also decide how they make their RPKI material available to the public: the holder can either deploy and operate their own publication engine and associated rsync and RRDP infrastructures (referred to as a "self-hosted repository") or make use a third-party operated publication service (e.g., operated by a RIR).¶

If the resource holder chooses to self-host the repository, then they take on the responsibility for ensuring the high availability of their signed data via RRDP and rsync (further described in Sections 5 and 6 of this document).¶

Because RPs are expected to make use of cached data from previous successful fetches (Section 6 of [RFC9286]), short outages on the server side do not need to be cause for immediate concern -- provided that the self-hosting operator restores access availability in a timely fashion, i.e., before objects become stale.¶

However, in practice, self-hosted repositories tend to exhibit more frequent availability issues when compared with those provided by larger specialized organisations such as RIRs and NIRs. Additionally, the greater the number of distinct repositories, the more workload for RPs and greater the chance for negative impact on the overall ecosystem. Therefore, CAs that act as parents of other CAs are RECOMMENDED to provide a publication service for their child CAs, and CAs with a parent who offers a publication service are RECOMMENDED to use that service (rather than self-hosting). If a CA's parent does not offer a publication service, but the CA operator is able to use another reliable third-party publication service, the CA operator SHOULD make use of that service in order to consolidate their data with other CAs and increase efficiency for RPs.¶

For the case of a 'grandchild' CA, where CA1 is a CA, CA2 is a child CA of CA1, and CA3 is a child CA of CA2, there are several options for providing publication service to CA3:¶

1. [RFC8183] defines a 'referral' mechanism as part of the out-of-band CA setup protocol. For example, if supported by CA1 and CA2, then this simplifies the process of registering CA3 as a direct publication client of CA1.¶

2. CA1 may support the registration of multiple publishers by CA2, by using the <publisher_request/>/<repository_response/> XML exchange defined in [RFC8183]. CA2 would then be able to register a separate publisher on behalf of CA3.¶

3. CA2 may operate a publication proxy service (e.g., [rpki-publication-proxy]), which acts as the publication server for CA3. This proxy would set aside part of CA2's namespace at CA1 for the publication of CA3's objects, adjusting and forwarding requests from CA3 to CA1 accordingly.¶

For options 1 and 2, CAs operating as CA1 should consider the implications of providing direct publication service to CA3 in this way: for example, CA3 may expect publication service technical support from CA1 directly.¶

3.2. Publication Server as a Service

The CA-facing publication engine and public-facing repository services have different requirements on their availability and reachability. While the publication engine only needs to be accessed by publishers, the repository content MUST be highly-available to any RP worldwide. Depending on the specific setup, this may allow for additional access restrictions in this context: for example, the publication engine can limit access to known publisher source IP addresses or apply rate limits.¶

If the publication engine is unavailable for some reason, this will prevent publishers from making new RPKI material available. The most immediate impact of such event is that the publisher cannot distribute new issuances and revocations of Route Origin Authorizations (ROAs) [RFC9582], Autonomous System Provider Authorizations (ASPAs) [I-D.ietf-sidrops-aspa-profile], and BGPsec Router Certificates [RFC8209] for the duration of this outage. Thus, in effect, the resource holder cannot inform the world about changes to its routing intentions. If the outage persists for an extended period, then RPKI Manifests, Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs), and Signed Objects cached by RPs will became stale, in turn hampering, for example, BGP Origin Validation [RFC6811]. For the aforementioned reasons, the publication engine MUST be highly-available.¶

Research on RPKI material propagation time (e.g., [rpki-time-in-flight]), specifically the delay period between issuance of ROAs and the eventual application of the resulting Validated ROA Payloads in Internet routing, showed that propagation time ranged between 15 and 95 minutes for the CAs and associated repositories that were part of the study. The study highlighted how the delay between signing and publication can be a major contributor to long propagation times.¶

It is RECOMMENDED to monitor the availability and latency of publication engines in a round-trip fashion by keeping track of expected and observed appearance of re-issued objects.¶

To make publishers aware of the probable root cause of disruption in the publication engine and allow them to plan accordingly ahead of time, maintenance windows SHOULD be planned and communicated to publishers.¶

3.3. Data Loss

Publication service operators MUST aim to minimise data loss. If a server restore was needed and a content regression occurred (for example, due to restoration from a slightly out-of-date backup), then the server MUST perform an RRDP session reset.¶

CAs typically only check in with their publication server when they have produced changes in RPKI material that need to be shared with the world. As a result, the CA may not be aware whether the server performed a restore and their content regressed to an earlier state. This could result in a number of problems:¶

• The currently published ROAs no longer reflect the CA's intentions.¶
• The CA might not reissue their Manifest or CRL in time, because they operated under the assumption that the currently-published Manifest and CRL have not yet became stale.¶
• Changes to publishers may not have been persisted. Newly registered publishers may not be present, and recently removed publishers may still be present.¶

Therefore, the publication engine operator SHOULD notify its dependent CAs about any service affecting issues as soon as possible, so that affected CAs know to initiate a full resynchronisation.¶

3.4. Publisher Repository Synchronisation

It is RECOMMENDED that publishing CAs always perform a list query as described in Section 2.3 of [RFC8181] before submitting changes to the publication server. This approach means that any desynchronisation issue can be resolved at least as soon as the publisher is aware of updates that it needs to publish.¶

When publishing changes in material, CAs SHOULD send all their changes using multiple PDUs contained within a single multi-element query message (described in Sections 2.2 and 3.7.1 of [RFC8181]). This approach reduces the risk of changesets that were intended to take effect as an atomic action from taking effect in an inconsistent fashion.¶

In addition to the above, the publishing CA MAY perform regular planned synchronisation events where it issues an [RFC8181] list query and ensures that the publication server has the expected state, even if the CA has no new material to publish. For publication engines that serve a large number of CAs (e.g., thousands) this operation could become costly from a resource consumption perspective. Unfortunately, the publication protocol specified in [RFC8181] has no adequate support for rate limiting or signaling requests to CAs to backoff. Therefore, publishers SHOULD NOT perform this resynchronisation more frequently than once every 10 minutes, unless otherwise agreed with the publication engine operator.¶

4.1. Hostnames

It is RECOMMENDED that a different hostname is used in the public RRDP Server URI from that of the [RFC8183] service_uri used by publishers, as well as that of any rsync URIs (i.e., sia_base) used by the relevant publication service.¶

Using a unique hostname for the different components will allow an operator to use dedicated infrastructures and/or a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for its RRDP content without interfering with the other functions.¶

If feasible, there is merit in using different Top-Level Domains (TLDs) (Section 2 of [RFC9499]) and/or subdomains for these hostnames, as DNS issues at any level could otherwise be a single point of failure affecting both RRDP and rsync services. Operators need to weigh this benefit against potential increased operational risk and the burden of maintaining multiple domains. Because the usefulness of this approach is highly context-dependent, no deployment recommendation is provided here.¶

Furthermore, it is RECOMMENDED that DNSSEC is used in accordance with best current practices as described in [RFC9364].¶

4.2. IP Reachability

To increase reachability, publication service operators SHOULD make their public-facing services and the publication engine available via both IPv4 and IPv6 at the same time. Publication services via both IP address families help bridge between publishers and RPs in case those are constrained to different address families and no translation mechanism is in place (e.g., NAT64 [RFC6146]).¶

4.3. IP Address Space and Autonomous Systems

To prevent failure scenarios that persist beyond remediation, the topological placement and reachability of publication servers in the global Internet routing system need to be considered very carefully. Refer to Section 6 of [RFC7115] for discussion on a trade-off in placement of an RPKI repository in address space for which the repository's content is authoritative.¶

An example of a problematic scenario is when an IP prefix or Autonomous System (AS) path related to a repository becomes invalid because of RPKI objects published in that repository. As a result, RPs may be unable to retrieve remediating updates from that repository.¶

It is thus RECOMMENDED to use IP addresses for RRDP and rsync services from an IP address space which is not subordinate to authorities solely dependent on those service endpoints, unless for example this is outweighed by the perceived risk of an operational dependency on IP space that is managed by another organisation.¶

It is also RECOMMENDED to host RRDP and rsync services in ASes that are not subordinate to authorities publishing through those same endpoints. As with IP address use, the benefits of hosting in accordance with this recommendation must be weighed against the potential risks of an operational dependency on ASes managed by another organisation.¶

In addition, it is RECOMMENDED to host RRDP and rsync services on separate networks to avoid fate sharing if one of the networks becomes unreachable.¶

5.1. Same Origin URIs

Publication service operators need to be aware of the normative updates to [RFC8182] specified in Section 3.1 of [RFC9674]. In short, these updates mean that all delta and snapshot URIs need to reside on the same host, i.e., HTTP redirects or references to other origins are not allowed and not followed by RPs.¶

5.2. Endpoint Protection

Repository operators SHOULD configure access control policies to protect their RRDP endpoints. For example, if the repository operator knows HTTP GET parameters are not used to provide service, then the operator can safely block any requests containing GET parameters.¶

5.3. Bandwidth and Data Usage

The bandwidth requirements for RRDP evolve over time and depend on many factors, consisting of three main groups:¶

1. RRDP-specific repository properties, such as the size of notification, delta, and snapshot files.¶
2. Properties of the CAs publishing through a particular server, such as the number of updates, number of objects, the length of the validity period, and size of objects.¶
3. RP behaviour, e.g., using HTTP compression, requiring timeouts or minimum transfer speed for downloads, and using conditional HTTP requests (Section 13 of [RFC9110]).¶

When an RRDP repository server is reacheable via a congested network link or otherwise overloaded (i.e., demand somehow exceeds available capacity), this can cause a cascading failure in which the aggregate load on the server continues to increase, resulting in degraded service for all RPs. For example, when an RP attempts to fetch one or more delta files, and one fails, it will typically try to fetch the snapshot (which is a larger object than the failed delta). If this also fails, the RP falls back to rsync. Furthermore, when the RP tries to use RRDP again on the next run, it typically starts by fetching the snapshot.¶

A publication service operator SHOULD attempt to prevent these issues by closely monitoring performance metrics (e.g., consumed capacity, available memory, disk I/O, expected functioning of a canary RP outside their network, watch logs for unexpected fallbacks to snapshot). Other than increasing the capacity, several other measures to reduce demand for bandwidth are discussed in what follows.¶

The RRDP XML container and its embedded Base64-encoded content are highly compressible; compression typically reduces the volume of transferred data by approximately 50%. Therefore, RRDP endpoints SHOULD support compression. At a minimum, gzip content coding (see Section 8.4.1.3 of [RFC9110]) SHOULD be supported due to its widespread deployment. Additionally, servers are RECOMMENDED to support other widely used compression algorithms where feasible.¶

RRDP snapshots can be substantial in size (e.g., tens to hundreds of megabytes). Operators should be aware that some CDNs automatically turn off compression for very large files and override this if possible to avoid accidentally disabling compression.¶

5.4. Content Availability

Publication service operators MUST ensure that their RRDP servers are highly available.¶

The RRDP snapshot and delta files SHOULD remain available for two hours after they have become unreferenced by the latest RRDP notification file. Not doing so may lead to files being not found due to race conditions or slow fetching by RPs, and force RPs to fall back to full snapshot or rsync fetching.¶

If possible, it is RECOMMENDED that a CDN is used to serve the RRDP content. Special care MUST be taken to ensure that the notification file is not cached for longer than 1 minute unless the backend RRDP server is unavailable, in which case it is RECOMMENDED that stale files are served.¶

Some CDN services might cache HTTP 404 responses for resources not found on the backend server. Because of this, publication engines SHOULD use randomised unpredictable paths for snapshot and delta files, to avoid the intermediate CDN caching such HTTP 404 responses hampering future updates. Alternatively, the publication engine operator can instruct the CDN to purge cached information for the paths on which new files are published.¶

Note that some organisations that run a publication server may be able to attain a similar level of availability themselves without the use of a third-party caching infrastructure. This document makes no specific recommendations on achieving this, as this is highly dependent on local circumstances and operational preferences.¶

Also note that small repositories that serve a single CA, and which contain only a small amount of RPKI material that does not change frequently, may attain high availability using a modest setup. Short downtime would not lead to immediate issues for the CA, provided that the service is restored before their manifest and CRL become stale. This may be acceptable to the CA operator, however, because connecting to many distinct publication points can negatively impact RP workload, it is RECOMMENDED that these CAs instead use a publication service provided by their RIR or NIR.¶

5.5. Limit Notification File Size

Most RP implementations use conditional requests (e.g., If-Modified-Since (Section 13.1.3 of [RFC9110])) when fetching notification files, as this reduces the traffic for repositories that do not often update relative to the resynchronisation frequency of RPs. On the other hand, for repositories that update frequently, the underlying snapshot and delta content accounts for most of the traffic. For example, for a large repository in January 2024, with a notification file with 144 deltas covering 14 hours, the requests for the notification file accounted for 251GB of traffic out of a total of 55.5TB (i.e., less than 0.5% of the total traffic during that period).¶

However, this ratio may be different for some servers. [RFC8182] stipulates that the sum of the size of deltas must not exceed the snapshot size, in order to avoid RPs downloading more data than necessary. However, this does not account for the size of the notification file that all RPs download. Keeping many deltas present may allow RPs to recover more efficiently if they are significantly out of sync. Still, including all such deltas can also increase the total data transfer, because it increases the size of the notification file.¶

In order to mitigate potential problems, the notification file size MAY be reduced by removing delta file entries from the notification file that already have been available for an extended period of time. Because some RP instances may only synchronize every 1-2 hours, the RRDP server SHOULD include deltas for at least 4 hours.¶

Furthermore, it is RECOMMENDED that publication engines do not produce RRDP delta files more frequently than once per minute. A possible approach for this is that the publication engine publishes changes at a regular (one minute) interval. The RRDP server then makes available the new materials received from all Publishers in this interval in a single RRDP delta file. While this does not reduce the amount of data due to changed objects, this results in shorter notification files and reduces the number of delta files that RPs need to fetch and process.¶

5.6. Manifest and CRL Update Times

The manifest and CRL nextUpdate times and validity periods are determined by the issuing CA rather than the publication engine operator.¶

From the CA's perspective, longer validity periods mean that there is more time to resolve unforeseen operational issues, since the current RPKI objects will remain valid for longer. On the other hand, longer validity periods also increase the risk of a successful replay attack.¶

From the publication engine's point of view, shorter update times result in more data churn due to manifest and CRL reissuance. While the choice is made by the CAs, in certain modes of operation (e.g., hosted RPKI services) it may be possible to adjust the timing of manifest and CRL reissuance. In one large repository it was observed that increasing the reissuance cycle from once every 24 hours to once every 48 hours reduced data usage by approximately 50%, this is because generally most changes in the repository content are reissuance of manifests and CRLs, rather than newly issued ROAs and ASPAs.¶

5.7. Using Short and Unique Filenames for each Issuance

While the filenames of signed objects are determined by the issuing CA rather than the publication engine operator, publishers should be cognizant that their choice of the file naming scheme can positively or negatively impact publication point operations.¶

• Because filenames are repeated multiple times throughout RPKI materials (e.g., in Subject Information Access (SIA) fields, Authority Information Access (AIA) fields, CRL Distribution Points (CRLDP) fields, as part of in Manifest fileLists, and in the uri field in RRDP publish elements), use of shorter filenames has a positive impact on storage & bandwidth required in the overall ecosystem. Therefore publishers are RECOMMENDED to use filenames shorter than 32 characters.¶

• The algorithm most commonly used in the preparation phase of rsync transfers relies on the 3-tuple of filename, filesize, and last-modification timestamp to determine whether material was updated and should be transferred. Therefore, using a new unique filename for each new issuance may help improve reliable propagation of newly signed material in the pipeline from publishers to RPs.¶

An additional benefit of using new unique filenames for new content is improved debuggability, because using the same name throughout time for different things may hamper, for example, swift and accurate interpretation of log messages containing filenames.¶

In summary, to conserve bandwidth, to improve reliability of object propagation, and to make debugging easier, publishers are RECOMMENDED use "one-time-use" EE certificates (Section 3 of [RFC6487]) and to adhere to the guidelines for naming objects described in Section 2.2 of [RFC6481].¶

5.8. ROA Prefix Aggregation

The practice of issuing ROAs with only a single prefix per ROA [RFC9455] can lead to many ROA objects being published by a given CA. However, clustering multiple prefixes in a single ROA (per origin AS) can achieve a significant reduction in the number of objects and the total size of a repository. In order to reduce bandwidth consumption and reduce the number of signatures, it is RECOMMENDED that issuing CAs cluster as many prefixes per ROA as possible, provided:¶

• Fate sharing is not a concern, for example, when both the parent and issuing CA are controlled by the same entity.¶
• The operational impact of publishing many ROAs outweighs the perceived fate sharing risks, e.g., because it leads to excessive bandwidth demands on the repository, or it is causing overly large manifests, or it leads to an excessive amount of data or number of files for RPs.¶

5.9. Consistent Load-Balancing

6.1. Internally Consistent Repository Content

A naive implementation of the rsync server might change the repository content while RPs are transferring files. Even when the repository is consistent from the repository server's point of view, clients may read an internally inconsistent set of files. Clients may get a combination of newer and older objects. This "phantom read" can lead to unpredictable and unreliable results. While modern RPs will treat such inconsistencies as a "Failed Fetch" [RFC9286], it is best to avoid this situation altogether, since a failed fetch for one repository can cause the rejection of delegated certificates and/or RPKI signed objects for a sub-CA when resources change.¶

One way to ensure that rsyncd serves its connected clients (RPs) with a consistent view of the repository is by configuring the rsyncd 'module' path to a path that contains a symlink that the repository-writing process updates for every repository publication.¶

Following this process, when an update is published:¶

1. write the complete updated repository into a new directory,¶
2. fix-up the timestamps of files (see {{sec-ts}}), and¶
3. change the symlink to point to the new directory.¶

With this approach, if the rsync service resolves the relevant symbolic link at the time when the client connects, and then uses the target directory for the duration of that session, the client will read consistent state from the service.¶

Implementation Notes:¶

Several implementations follow the above process for updates. E.g. [krill-sync], [rpki-core], [rsyncit], the 'rpki.apnic.net' repository implementation, and [rsync-move]).¶

The original [rsync] implementation through to version 3.4.2 (inclusive) resolves module path symbolic links as required by this section, without special configuration being required. For versions after that through to at least 3.4.4 (inclusive), the default behaviour is instead that module path symbolic links are resolved multiple times per session. One way to restore the original behaviour is by using the "use chroot" configuration option¶

To limit the amount of disk space a repository uses, a rsync server must clean up old copies of the repository; the timing of these removal operations involves balancing the provision of service to slow clients against the additional disk space required to support those clients.¶

A repository can safely remove old hierarchies when no RP is still reading that data at a reasonable rate. Since the last moment an RP can start reading from a copy is when it was last "current", the time a client has to read a copy begins when it was last current (cf. the time when it was originally written).¶

Empirical data suggests that rsync server operators MAY assume it is safe to remove old versions of repositories after two hours. It is recommended to monitor for "file has vanished" (or similar) lines in the rsync log file to detect how many clients are affected by the cleanup process timing parameters.¶

6.2. Deterministic Timestamps

By default, rsync implementations use the modification time and file size to determine if it should transfer a file. Therefore, throughout a file's lifetime, the modification time SHOULD NOT change -- unless the file's content changes.¶

The following deterministic heuristics are RECOMMENDED as the file's timestamp when writing objects to disk:¶

• For CRLs, use the value of thisUpdate.¶
• For RPKI Signed Objects, use the Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) signing-time value [RFC9589].¶
• For CA and BGPsec Router Certificates, use the value of notBefore.¶
• For directories, use any constant value.¶

6.3. Load-Balancing and Testing

To increase availability during both planned maintenance and exceptional situations, a rsync repository that strives for high availability should be deployed on multiple nodes load-balanced by a Layer 4 load balancer. Because rsync sessions use a single TCP connection per synchronisation attempt, there is no need for consistent load-balancing between multiple rsync servers as long as they each provide a consistent view.¶

It is RECOMMENDED that the rsync server is load tested to ensure that it can handle simultaneous requests from all RPs, in case those RPs need to fall back from using RRDP (as is currently preferred).¶

It is RECOMMENDED to serve rsync repositories from local storage, so that the host operating system can optimally use its I/O cache. Using network storage is NOT RECOMMENDED, because it may not benefit from this cache. For example, when using NFS, the operating system might not be able to cache the directory listing(s) of the repository.¶

It is RECOMMENDED to set the "max connections" to a value that allows a single node to handle simultaneous resynchronisation by that number of RPs, taking into account the amount of time that RP implementations usually allow for rsync resychronisation. Load-testing results show that machine memory is likely the limiting factor for large repositories that are not IO limited.¶

The number of rsync servers needed depends on the number of RPs, their refresh rate, and the "max connections" used. These values are subject to change over time, so it is hard to give clear recommendations here except to restate that it is RECOMMENDED to load-test rsync service and reevaluating parameters over time.¶