RPKI Now Protects 70% of Internet Routes, Up from 54% a Year Ago
Internet routing has grown more secure with the adoption of Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), which now protects 70% of Internet routes, up from 54% a year ago. RPKI prevents errors like when Pakistan Telecom (AS17557) mistakenly blocked YouTube inside Pakistan by announcing a more specific route. This error was accepted by PCCW Global (AS3491) and spread globally, redirecting YouTube traffic to Pakistan for two hours.
RPKI lets IP address block holders publish signed records (Route Origin Authorization - ROA), naming allowed announcing networks. Network operators compare announcements with ROAs and can reject invalid ones. In September 2026, 70.3% of routed prefixes were RPKI-valid, a 16.4 percentage point increase. China made up most of this increase, jumping from 3.7% valid in September 2025 to 83.0% a year later.
Outside China, valid route shares rose from 58% to 63.2%. The share of invalid routes remains small, with most affecting only one vantage point. RPKI protects who may originate a prefix, but not the path, meaning it isn't fully bulletproof. Despite this, IPv6 adoption of RPKI has accelerated and now surpasses IPv4.
Written by urgent.news from Hacker News's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
