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Recognizing the relevance of securing inter-domain routing to protect traffic flows in the Internet, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standardized the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), a framework to provide networks with a system to cryptographically validate routing data. Despite many obstacles, RPKI has emerged as the consensus to improve routing security and currently about 50% of routed IP address blocks are part of the system. The Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) are in charge of allocating address space in five different geographical zones and play a crucial role in RPKI: they are the roots of trust of the cryptographic system and provide the infrastructure to host RPKI certificates and keys for the Internet resources allocated in their region. Organizations and networks wanting to issue RPKI records for their address space need to follow the process from the RIR that delegated their address space. In this paper, we analyze the RIRs’ implementation of RPKI infrastructure from the perspective of network operators. Based on in-depth interviews with 13 network engineers who have been involved in their organizations’ efforts to adopt RPKI, we examine the RIR initiatives that have or would have most supported RPKI adoption for different types of organizations. Given RIRs have independently developed and implemented the cryptographic infrastructure as well as the tooling to issue and manage certificates, we offer recommendations on strategies that have encouraged RPKI adoption. 

Society increasingly relies on the Internet as a critical infrastructure. Inter-domain routing is a core Internet protocol that enables trac to flow globally across independent networks. Concerns about Internet infrastructure security have prompted policymakers to promote stronger routing security and the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) in particular. RPKI is a cryptographic framework to secure routing that was standardized in 2012. In 2024, almost 50% of routed IP address blocks are still not covered by RPKI certificates. It is unclear what barriers are preventing net- works from adopting RPKI. This paper investigates networks with low RPKI adoption to understand where and why adoption is low or non-existent. We find that networks’ geographical area of service, size, business category and complexity of address space delegation impact RPKI adoption. Our analysis may help direct policymakers’ efforts to promote RPKI adoption and improve the state of routing security.