[mat-wg] Possible new RIS Beacon? (Alternating visible pair)

Dear Ben,

On Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 06:16:28PM +0000, Ben Cartwright-Cox via mat-wg wrote:
> On my seemingly never ending task to find all "stuck" BGP sessions, I
> feel like there is an interesting thing that could be done for the
> RIPE RIS Beacons, and that is a pair of prefixes that alternate
> between being visible and invisible (IE: unannounced).
> 
> I looked at the current estate of beacon prefixes and couldn't find
> anything that would fit this use case already.

Good news - I think this is already covered by existing beacons! :-)

Reading https://ris.ripe.net/docs/routing-beacons/#current-beaconing-setup

    """
    For all beacon prefixes below we have a 2 hour up - 2 hour down
    schedule. Specifically:

    Announcements at 00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00 (UTC)
    Withdrawals at   02:00, 06:00, 10:00, 14:00, 18:00, 22:00 (UTC)
    """

Make sure to focus on the 'type = beacon' prefixes, and use 'type =
anchor' as baseline: e.g. if 'anchor' is missing but you see 'beacon',
something is off.

The above beacons have been used in the past to study the zombie
phenomenon: https://www.iijlab.net/en/members/romain/pdf/pora_anrw2021.pdf

Using these beacons in a semi-real-time fashion in your monitoring
service seems productive.

Kind regards,

Job