AFRINIC has launched the Africa Internet Registry and Routing Statistics (AIRRS) portal (https://airrs.afrinic.net).

AIRRS aims to bring registry and routing statistics closer to the African Internet community. The portal provides easy access to data selected from many sources such as WHOIS, RIPE RIS, and RIPE Atlas, and other external data sets such as Maxmind, M-Lab, Spamhaus, Speedchecker, and more. AIRRS is powered by the RIPEstat API and therefore benefits from the same sources of information.

AIRRS is the outcome of an inter-RIR collaboration between the RIPE NCC and AFRINIC. Team members from the RIPEStat and AFRINIC Research developed together with the AIRRS platform which actively retrieves data from RIPEstat. In a nutshell, AIRRS is basically RIPE Statistics crafted for the African region, with particular emphasis on the African community requirements. After this launch, in the second phase of the project, we will be gathering feedback on new widget ideas and datasets that the African Internet community would seek to see on the platform.

Fig 1. Type a country code to get country-level information on routed prefixes, database information, RIPE Atlas deployment for the country.

This new portal is also a revamp of the now-defunct AIRRS BGP Report service, used for sending email reports to community mailing lists on the state of AFRINIC prefix allocations and the corresponding announcements on the global routing table. While the new AIRRS does not necessarily replace the previous email sending service, it now provides an interface to the same information, making it more accessible and user-friendly.

Fig 2. Type in an Internet number resource (IPv4, IPv6 or ASN) to get the routing status, RPKI coverage and WHOIS information about the Internet resource.

AIRRS can be used for a series of use cases such as as an interface to WHOIS, you can also check the routing status of a prefix, or check the list of prefixes announced by an ASN and find the RPKI/ROA status of your prefix. AIRRS will also provide you historical routing information, you just need to navigate to the “Routing tab” and check the BGP History prefix of a prefix. 

AIRRS also provides geolocation of the resources through the Maxmind service and highlights the different locations where a prefix has been seen. Maxmind does not provide exact geolocation information but rather attempts to provide accurate information at country-level.

You can access our prototype here: https://airrs.afrinic.net. We also request your feedback on how this tool can be improved to better suit your needs. Send your recommendations to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

In its next implementation phase, we will develop additional widgets based on the recommendations and requests from the AFRINIC community. Widgets will eventually be made available on the RIPE Stat platform to be used by the global community.