BGP Monitor Results

This article describes the BGP Monitor results page, which is part of Kentik’s Tests page.

The BGP Monitor results page provides an in-depth, graphical view of BGP routing data, reachability, and AS path changes for your monitored prefixes over a selected time range.

Note: BGP tests monitor routing rather than agent-to-target paths, so there are no subtests (and thus no Subtest Results pages) for BGP Monitor tests.

BGP Monitor Main Controls

The top of the page includes breadcrumb navigation and the BGP test's name, along with the following controls:

• Pause/Resume Test: Temporarily suspend or restart the test.

• Settings: Opens the configuration settings for the current test.

• Share: Generates a link to share the current view with other users.

• Export: Access options to export the current view.

• Time Range: A dropdown menu to select the lookback period, e.g., 1 Day.

  Note: The maximum valid duration for a BGP Monitor test is 24 hours.

• Latest: Jumps to the most recent data point.

Incident Timeline

The Incident Timeline provides an interactive chart plotting the overall health and status of your monitored prefixes over the selected time range. Hovering over the chart displays the exact timestamps for specific data points.

BGP Section

The core routing data is presented in a unified BGP section with the following components:

• Filters: A control bar that dictates what is displayed in the charts below.

  • Show Dropdown: Choose to view Reachability / Visibility, AS Path Changes, or Show All (both charts).

  • Prefix Dropdown: Select the specific prefix whose information is displayed in the visualizations.

  • Checkboxes: Toggle the visibility of the Timelines, ASN Name, or Paths Graph.

• Identified Issues (Conditional): If the test status for one or more time slices in the currently selected time range is Critical or Warning, a table will automatically appear. This table lists events that generated an incident (e.g., Unexpected Origin, Invalid RPKI, Unexpected Upstream, or Low Reachability) along with their start and end times.

• Reachability / Visibility: A time series chart showing the percentage of vantage points (public BGP routing data collectors; see BGP Event Datasets) that are able to reach the currently specified prefix. You can click the options menu (vertical ellipses) to toggle the view by Origin or Upstream.

• AS Path Changes: (If selected in Filters) A time series chart showing the number of AS path changes observed by the vantage points. Changes are rendered as spikes; the taller the spike, the more changes occurred at that increment.

  

• AS Path Visualization: A diagram showing the AS paths via which the monitored prefix was reachable from one or more vantage points at the selected time.

  • Visual Layout & Pruning: The hops (ASes) are represented as shaded rectangles, flowing left to right, with the monitored prefix on the far right. To reduce clutter, if less than 3% of the vantage points advertise an AS in their paths to the monitored prefixes, that AS is "pruned" (hidden) from the diagram along with its upstream paths.

  • Hop (AS) Details: Each rectangle displays the ASN and AS name. A Binocular icon indicates the AS either includes one or more vantage points itself, or is the first shown AS in a path that has been pruned upstream.

  • Interactive Controls:

    • Time Navigation: Click any point on the Reachability or AS Path Changes time series charts above to update the diagram to that specific point in time.

    • Page Filtering: Click any AS rectangle in the diagram to filter the page's time series charts, path diagram, and events table to only include information related to that AS. A filter checkbox will appear in the top controls pane, which you can uncheck to remove.

  • Hover Popups:

    • AS Popup: Hovering over an AS reveals its ASN, Name, number of Vantage Points, Transiting Paths, and Pruned Paths.

    • Show Vantage Points: At the bottom of an AS Popup, this link opens a list of the specific vantage points (Collector, Peer ASN, Peer IP, and AS Path) within that AS or its pruned upstream paths.

    • Link Popup: Hovering over a line connecting two ASes displays the starting AS, ending AS, and the total number of paths advertised between them.