Today rr.rxtx.nl went live — a public Internet Routing Registry daemon running IRRd 4.5.2.
What it does
It mirrors the major IRR sources — RIPE, RADB, ARIN, APNIC, LACNIC, ALTDB, and others — and serves them over whois (port 43) and a GraphQL API. If you’re validating route objects, checking !gAS1, or querying RPSL data programmatically, it’s another endpoint in the ecosystem.
Why run one
The IRR is critical infrastructure for BGP security, but it’s still a volunteer-run, loosely federated system. Most of the heavy lifting is done by a handful of operators who’ve been running mirrors for decades. I use these services daily — it was time to give something back.
Running your own mirror also teaches you exactly how brittle the data pipeline can be. FTP endpoints that time out. Serial numbers that drift. 5GB+ databases that need an hour to parse. You gain a lot of respect for the people keeping this system upright.
Specs
- VM: Debian 13 Trixie on Proxmox, 64GB RAM, 8 cores, 200GB SSD
- Software: IRRd 4.5.2 via pipx, PostgreSQL 17, Redis 8
- TLS: Let’s Encrypt via nginx reverse proxy
- Sources: RIPE, RADB, ARIN, APNIC, LACNIC, ALTDB, TC, ROGERS, WCGNET, RPKI
How to use it
whois -h rr.rxtx.nl '!gAS1'
curl https://rr.rxtx.nl/graphql/
It’s not a replacement for the primary mirrors — it’s an additional node. More redundancy, lower latency for European queries, and one more operator keeping the lights on.
If you’re running a network and relying on IRR data: consider running your own mirror, or at least know which sources your tooling is hitting. The system only works if enough people care about it.