Resource certification verifies that an Internet number resource (IP address space or autnonomous system number) has legitimately been allocated by a Regional Internet Registry. It will also benefit every network operator and Internet user in the world by helping to ensure long-term routing stability.

In January 2011 the RIPE NCC launched a system that allows RIPE NCC members (LIRs) to generate a digital certificate for the assignment or allocation of Internet number resources made to them.

As shown in the figure below, the number of certificates for the RIPE NCC trust anchor is 409 as of today. This is the number of LIRs who have generated a certificate for their Internet number resources. The vast majority has also created Route Origin Authorisation (ROA) objects using their certificate, indicating which Autonomous Systems are authorised to announce their IP address blocks.

When the system was launched, we immediately observed a high number of certificates being generated. Since then we could see a steady increase.

In total, LIRs have created ROAs for over 54,000 IPv4 /24 equivalents (0.6% of IPv4 address space publicly announced as seen by the RIPE NCC Routing Information Service) and 13 million IPv6 /48 prefix equivalents.

We would like to encourage all other RIPE NCC members to make use of this system and certify their Internet number resources.

For more information plus a link to the daily updated statistics for the RIPE NCC and the four other RIRs, please refer to the background article on RIPE Labs: Resource Certification Statistics. You can find more information about the Certification system on the RIPE NCC web site: http://www.ripe.net/certification