Between September and October 2026, NYIIX moved both its route servers to a new platform over several maintenance windows:
- The route servers now run BIRD 3, and protect against route leaks with BGP roles (RFC 9234).
- Looking Glass is also now reachable over IPv6 (in addition to IPv4 as before).
- The new platform itself will change nothing in how you reach the route servers.
- Peering addresses and the route server AS numbers remain unchanged.
- Unless you configure BGP roles (please see “What you need to do” below), no change is needed on your side.
What changed
BIRD 3
The routing daemon has been upgraded from BIRD 2 to BIRD 3, the current major release. BIRD 3 processes the routes of different sessions in parallel instead of one after another, so a large update from one member no longer delays processing for everyone else.
Route Leak Protection (RFC 9234)
The route servers now signal their BGP role (route server) as defined in RFC 9234 and mark every route they send with the Only-to-Customer (OTC) attribute – a marker meaning that the route may only be passed on to the receiving network’s own customers.
For example. a member router configured for RFC 9234 roles will therefore not pass those routes on to a transit provider by mistake, and a route carrying the marker that is announced back to NYIIX is recognized as a leak and rejected.
Looking Glass over IPv6
Looking Glass (https://lg.nyiix.net) can now be reached over both IPv4 and IPv6. Networks that are IPv6-only will now have full access to the Looking Glass website itself. Whether accessed from IPv4 or IPv6, the route servers have always carried IPv6 routes and that remains unchanged.
Looking Glass shows which of your prefixes NYIIX accepts in addition to what other members announce to the route servers. Please note that its view is refreshed periodically and a brief lag may be detected in certain instances.
What you need to do
Nothing, in most cases.
The sessions that do not use BGP roles are accepted as before.
If you do configure a role for your NYIIX sessions, configure it as **rs-client**.
Any other role that does not match the route servers’ role will result in the session being refused.
Questions
If you have any questions about your route server sessions, please contact the IIX Engineering team here.
Thank you.