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Why Is It Taking So Long To Secure Internet Routing?
CowboyRobot writes: We live in an imperfect world where routing-security incidents can still slip past deployed security defenses, and no single routing-security solution can prevent every attacks. Research suggests, however, that the combination of RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure) with prefix filtering could significantly improve routing security; both solutions are based on whitelisting techniques and can reduce the number of autonomous systems that are impacted by prefix hijacks, route leaks, and path-shortening attacks. "People have been aware of BGP’s security issues for almost two decades and have proposed a number of solutions, most of which apply simple and well-understood cryptography or whitelisting techniques. Yet, many of these solutions remain undeployed (or incompletely deployed) in the global Internet, and the vulnerabilities persist. Why is it taking so long to secure BGP?"
You're just talking about BGP, which is done in software. A quick update will allow nearly all hardware that uses BGP to support the new protocol, assuming the code is small enough to fit in the firmware.
And what do you mean by edge routers? You mean the last mile or for peering? My ISP pays Level 3 to handle peering. If you're talking about last mile, then your ISP should have invested into fiber, which is easily and cheaply upgraded. At $100/port for a 500-1gb port chassis that can support 3tb/s, it's not that expensive. How long does it take to pay off $100? Actually, network equipment represents about 40% of an ISP's costs, the bulk of the cost is in customer support. Phone centers are expensive with an average cost of $1/minute that a customer is connected. A single truck roll can cost an ISP much much more.
An untrusted central authority is better than no security.