Show HN: BGP Scout – BGP Network Browser | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: BGP Scout – BGP Network Browser

bgpscout.io

27 pointshivedc12 comments

Hi HN,

When working with BGP data, I kept running into the same friction: it’s easy to get raw data, but surprisingly hard to browse networks over time — especially by when they appeared, where they operate, and what they actually look like at a glance.

I built a small tool, bgpscout.io, to scratch that itch.

It lets you:

Browse ASNs by registration date and geography

See where a given network appears to have presence

View commonly scattered public data about an ASN in one place

Save searches to track when new networks matching certain criteria appear

All of this data is public already; the goal was to make exploration faster and less painful.

I haven’t invested heavily in expanding it yet. Before doing so, I’m curious:

Is this solving a real problem for you?

What would make something like this actually useful in day-to-day work?

Feedback is welcome.

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Nothing worked from my phone, no videos of what it does. “Free account” didn’t do anything other than change the colour of the button.

>What would make something like this actually useful in day-to-day work?

Monitoring of BGP Changes for ASNs.

The other stuff isn't something I really need a new tool for.

There are other tools by Ripe, HE and the like that already allow me to see historical data.

The only point at which I need actual up-to-date to the minute data is during incidents. Hence the monitoring.

I use to use pulse turbobytes use tracroute from dozens of networks.

I lost count of how many times those results got a peer to acknowledge a forwarding plane discrepancy

I'd advise to first compare with:

- https://bgp.tools/ - https://bgproutes.io/ - https://bgp.he.net/ - https://radar.qrator.net/ - https://github.com/nttgin/BGPalerter

...all of which are (usually) free. IMHO you should have a competing product + money strategy before you continue. Many people have tried (and failed) to make money off BGP.

BTW, author of https://bgpipe.org/ here, an open-source BGP data tool

Just out of curiosity, why did you use Go for bgpipe and Python?

One reason is there already was exabgp, written in Python, which in my experience is slow and resource hungry. Golang is much faster, easily portable, and produces static binaries (easy to deploy).

Another thing is bgpipe speaks JSON to background (or even remote) packet processors, so basically you can use whatever language you want with it to drive your BGP routers.

Awesome - exactly the feedback I was looking for. Thanks a lot!

I usually just grab the RIS data from RIPE

same here

This should all be free. That's how pretty much everyone is already getting it. What does this do that cost subscription levels of money?

Sorry, too lazy to sign up just to try it out.

This.

It seems your project is at a really early stage. Almost none of the links on the page work, which is too bad, because it could have provided more background information on your goals and wishes. The only thing that seems to work is login through Google, which is a bit much for a demo site.

What's going to be the edge above the already excellent https://bgp.tools ?

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