Kentipedia

Kentik Use Cases for Internet Routing, BGP & Interconnection

Internet routing and interconnection are the invisible machinery behind performance, cost, and reliability. When paths change, prefixes become unreachable, or transit costs spike, the business impact can be immediate and hard to explain with single-pane tools.

This guide covers the most common internet routing, BGP, and interconnection use cases for Kentik and links each one to the most relevant Kentik Solutions and product pages, so teams can move from “what changed?” to “what should we do next?” with evidence.

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About Kentik: Kentik is a network intelligence platform for infrastructure teams and service providers. Kentik combines BGP routing visibility, traffic telemetry, and performance signals so teams can monitor prefix reachability and AS paths, detect leaks and hijacks, verify routing after changes, optimize peering and transit, and connect routing decisions to traffic, performance, and cost outcomes.

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Routing & interconnection use cases at a glance

1. Monitor BGP reachability, AS paths, and routing events
2. Detect BGP leaks and hijacks and respond faster
3. Optimize peering and transit to reduce cost and improve performance
4. Reduce connectivity spend with automated cost intelligence
5. Improve subscriber experience with CDN and OTT delivery insight
6. Example routing & interconnection workflows
7. FAQs about routing, BGP & interconnection

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1. Monitor BGP reachability, AS paths, and routing events

Kentik helps teams monitor prefix reachability and AS paths so routing changes are visible, explainable, and alertable across regions and PoPs.

Teams ask:

• Are our prefixes reachable from the internet right now?
• Did the AS path change, and where did it change?
• Are we seeing route flaps, unexpected origins, or policy mistakes that could impact customers?
• After an outage or maintenance window, did routing return to the expected state?

What you need to see:

• Prefix reachability and path visibility across many vantage points
• Time-based BGP event tracking (announcements, withdrawals, path changes)
• Alerts for routing events that can impact traffic, security, and performance
• A way to correlate routing changes with traffic and performance impact

How Kentik helps:

• Tracks prefix reachability and AS paths over time and surfaces meaningful routing changes quickly.
• Shows announcement/withdrawal activity and highlights changes by prefix with clear timelines.
• Alerts on critical BGP signals (reachability issues, route flaps, unexpected origins, RPKI invalids, leaks/hijacks, policy misconfigurations).
• Supports “verify after change” workflows by correlating routing changes with traffic and performance context.

Related solution page: BGP Route Monitoring

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2. Detect BGP leaks and hijacks and respond faster

Kentik helps teams detect route leaks and hijacks in real time and quickly understand the scope and impact of misrouted traffic.

Teams ask:

• Are we experiencing (or propagating) a leak or hijack?
• Which prefixes and origins are involved, and what changed in the path?
• What’s the blast radius: which regions, customers, or destinations are affected?
• Is a routing incident causing performance issues, security risk, or traffic detours?

What you need to see:

• Alerts for suspicious BGP behavior (unexpected origins, leaks, hijacks, RPKI invalids)
• Before/during/after AS-path comparisons for rapid validation
• Context that connects routing anomalies to traffic shifts and user impact

How Kentik helps:

• Provides leak/hijack detection and alerting to surface suspicious routing events quickly.
• Explains “what changed” with AS-path visibility and event timelines.
• Helps scope impact by correlating routing events to traffic distribution, key destinations, and performance signals.
• Supports routing verification after mitigation or upstream/provider fixes.

Related pages:

• BGP Route Monitoring
• Learn more about using Kentik for Network Security and Compliance

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3. Optimize peering and transit to reduce cost and improve performance

Kentik helps teams build data-driven peering and transit strategies by combining traffic visibility, routing context, and interconnection intelligence.

Teams ask:

• Which peers should we add, and what offload or savings should we expect?
• Are we overusing transit when peering could improve cost and latency?
• Which IX ports or private interconnects are becoming bottlenecks?
• Which CDNs/OTTs are driving growth, and where should we optimize delivery?

What you need to see:

• Traffic volumes and paths by peer, transit, IX, and private interconnect
• Ratios, delivery mix, and attribution by ASN/CDN/service/geography
• Interconnection context (policies, contacts, footprint overlap) to accelerate decisions
• Repeatable workflows and reporting for peering proposals and negotiations

How Kentik helps:

• Identifies potential peering targets and quantifies expected offload and impact.
• Provides visibility into traffic ratios and connectivity mix to support interconnection decisions.
• Integrates PeeringDB context into workflows so analysis is faster and less spreadsheet-driven.
• Helps track traffic growth drivers (CDN/OTT/service) and compare performance across interconnect types.

Related solution page: Optimize Peering and Transit
Related product page: Peering and Interconnection

In this short video case study, John Lubeck, Director of Core IP and Transport, shares how Midco uses Kentik to identify which content providers to connect with, understand traffic patterns across CDNs and OTT services, and plan capacity with real circuit costs (including committed rates and burst charges). Using Kentik, they shifted network traffic from 10% CDN to 90% on CDNs or local caches and 10% to transit. Lubeck says, “We’ve really flipped the whole script on how we manage that traffic.”

My team handles all the routing, switching, long haul transport for Midco Network. We were adding a lot of local caches, turning up peering connections, connecting to internet exchanges, and we really needed a tool to help us find what other content providers we should connect with. Kentik allowed us to do the capacity planning part by allowing us to enter in the costs of those circuits, what we pay when we burst above the committed rate. Those were all reports that were manually done before and this allowed us to auto-generate reports sent out to the finance team for that. This was a tool that was service provider specific and really was flexible and fit our needs. We're using Kentik for the traffic patterns, the over the top services, content delivery networks, you know, ensuring that we are offloading as much traffic as possible. The team is using it for some of the live events that occur on the internet, the streaming events, Thursday Night Football, Super Bowl. It's a lot of just answering questions that are being asked of them in a matter of seconds instead of hours. When we kind of started this, you know, maybe ten percent of our traffic went to a CDN. Now it's ninety percent on the CDNs or local caches and ten percent goes to transit. So we've really flipped the whole script on how we manage that traffic. Our ROI on the actual product is the efficiencies gained. We're not spending hours trying to track down some traffic through several different tools. It's one pane of glass. So it's freeing up my engineers to do, you know, the real engineering. Just the efficiencies and the time is what really has provided Midco value.

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4. Reduce connectivity spend with automated cost intelligence

Kentik helps teams track and optimize connectivity spend by linking pricing and contracts to delivered traffic across transit, peering, IXes, and PNIs so cost is explainable and actionable.

Teams ask:

• What are we spending by provider, site, and connectivity type?
• Which ASNs, CDNs, OTTs, and destinations drive the highest effective cost per Mbps?
• Where are we paying more than we should because of routing decisions or inefficient delivery paths?
• Can we validate invoices, forecast costs, and spot month-over-month trends automatically?

What you need to see:

• Normalized contracts and pricing across providers and link types
• Spend tracking by provider, connectivity type, site, and market
• Effective cost per Mbps with traffic attribution by ASN/CDN/service/geography
• Trends and snapshots for repeatable monthly analysis

How Kentik helps:

• Unifies and normalizes bandwidth contracts and pricing models across transit, peering, IXes, PNIs, and more.
• Tracks spend by provider, link type, and site and supports invoice validation, forecasting, and trend analysis.
• Links costs to ASNs, CDNs, OTTs, geographies, customers, and services to explain what’s driving spend.
• Surfaces high-cost routes and interconnects so engineering can optimize paths without manual spreadsheets.

Related solution page: Reduce Network Spend

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5. Improve subscriber experience with CDN and OTT delivery insight

Kentik helps service providers improve subscriber experience and profitability by connecting OTT/CDN delivery behavior to interconnect performance, delivery mix, and cost drivers.

Teams ask:

• What OTT, gaming, and social services are growing, and where do quality dips occur?
• Which CDNs are delivering our traffic, and how does on-net vs off-net mix affect cost and performance?
• Where should we add interconnects or caches to reduce cost and improve experience?
• Which markets have single-homed opportunities or shifting AS relationships?

What you need to see:

• Consumption trends by service and category (OTT, gaming, social, etc.)
• CDN delivery visibility, including on-net/off-net mix and benchmarking
• Interconnect context (including PeeringDB) tied to real traffic and markets
• Performance and delivery signals that help explain experience issues without DPI

How Kentik helps:

• Surfaces consumption trends, detects new services, and helps pinpoint service quality issues without DPI.
• Benchmarks CDN delivery and reveals on-net/off-net mix to optimize for cost and performance.
• Supports analytical interconnection strategy with traffic-driven discovery and integrated PeeringDB context.
• Provides market insights to evaluate AS relationships, market share, and single-homed opportunities.

Related solution page: Grow Subscriber Revenue

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Example routing & interconnection workflows (enterprise and service provider)

The sections above describe the core routing and interconnection capabilities (BGP reachability and AS-path visibility, leak/hijack detection, peering optimization, cost intelligence, and subscriber/CDN insight). Below are practical examples showing how teams combine those capabilities in day-to-day operations.

Enterprise and platform team workflow examples

1. “Are our prefixes reachable?” rapid reachability and path-change triage

• Confirm reachability for critical prefixes and identify the affected regions/PoPs.
• Compare AS paths and routing events “before vs after” the start of the incident.
• Correlate the routing change window with traffic shifts and performance impact to scope blast radius.
• Verify recovery after mitigation or upstream fixes with the same reachability and path comparisons.

2. “Did our change do what we intended?” routing verification after maintenance

• Watch for expected announcements/withdrawals and confirm paths converge back to the intended state.
• Validate that key destinations regained stable paths and reachability.
• Confirm performance outcomes (latency and loss signals) align with the routing outcome.

Service provider and NOC workflow examples

1. “Is this a leak or hijack?” incident scoping and escalation

• Trigger alerts on suspicious behavior (unexpected origins, reachability shifts, RPKI invalids).
• Use path comparisons to identify what changed and where it entered the ecosystem.
• Identify affected prefixes, destinations, and markets and summarize evidence for escalation.

2. “Should we peer here?” build a data-backed peering case

• Identify high-volume destinations currently delivered via transit and quantify offload potential.
• Validate ratios, footprint overlap, and likely interconnection sites (IX/DC) using integrated context.
• Produce a shareable report that supports negotiations and partner business reviews.

3. “Why is spend up?” monthly cost-per-bit tracking and optimization

• Attribute connectivity spend by provider, link type, and site, then identify the biggest cost drivers.
• Compute effective cost per Mbps by interconnect and isolate high-cost routes or markets.
• Identify routing or interconnection adjustments that reduce cost without degrading performance.

4. “Is CDN delivery mix hurting us?” on-net/off-net benchmarking and strategy

• Compare delivery performance and mix across CDNs and markets.
• Identify where off-net delivery increases cost or degrades experience.
• Use the evidence to justify cache placement, new interconnects, or traffic engineering changes.

More Service Provider Use Cases Video

In this short video, five customers explain why Kentik is essential for understanding traffic, controlling network costs, and planning for growth. Hear from Sorin Esanu (Race Communications), Michael Leclaire (MetroNet), John Lubeck (Midco), Wallace Lee (Imperva), and Everett Sinclair (Conway Corporation) on how they use Kentik to see “the bits on the wire,” dig deeper than traditional reporting tools, and turn network data into better customer experiences.

We always needed the insight regarding what's going on with the network. We needed to be able to sustain our network cost as we expanded. We really needed a tool to help us find what other content providers we should connect with. When we saw Kentik, we immediately said, yeah, this is for us. This is what we wanted. The clear advantage for Kentik is the ability to dig down into a deeper level than traditional, statistics reporting tool. If you take advantage of what the data is giving you, you can provide much better network and much better customer experience. Kentik allowed us to, do the capacity planning part. This allowed us to auto generate reports sent out to the finance team for that. We can give any of our CSRs access to it, any of our sales or marketing access to it, our technicians in the field. They can pose simple human based questions and it'll go in and find all the data for it. We use it a lot to detect the DDoSes and then have mitigation that it kicks in automatically. We don't have to do anything. And we built tools. We we have several dashboards where we see everything going in and out and understanding how traffic is flowing into, again, outside of our network. We've really been able to sculpt the traffic and understand where we need cache clusters and things. We've been able to work with providers and provide them detail from Kentik that basically justifies our use cases. We pay less in transit IP cost today than we do when we turned up Kentik. That's pretty incredible considering our traffic is is seven times what it was when we started. Maybe ten percent of our traffic went to a CDN. Now it's ninety percent and ten percent goes to transit. We've really flipped the whole script on how we manage that traffic. Not having Kentik is unacceptable. You have to be able to look at the bits going on the wire. You have to be able to see what they are, where they're going, plan for the future. And without Kentik, you'd have to find three or four other platforms to facilitate that. Kentik wraps it all up together.

Across service provider and enterprise environments, Kentik helps teams optimize peering and CDN offload, sculpt traffic and caching strategy, automate DDoS mitigation, reduce transit spend even as traffic scales, automate capacity planning and finance reporting, and make network insights accessible beyond engineering. The result: faster decisions, measurable efficiency, and a platform customers say they can’t operate without.

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FAQs about routing, BGP & interconnection

What should I monitor to know whether BGP is healthy?

Monitor prefix reachability, AS-path changes, and BGP events (announcements/withdrawals), and alert on suspicious signals like route flaps, unexpected origins, RPKI invalids, and leaks/hijacks. See: BGP Route Monitoring

How do I detect route leaks or hijacks quickly?

Use alerting that triggers on unexpected origins and anomalous AS-path behavior, then validate what changed using before/after path comparisons so you can scope impact and escalate with evidence. See: BGP Route Monitoring

How do I verify routing after a change or outage?

Compare reachability and AS paths before vs after the change, then correlate routing changes with traffic and performance signals to confirm recovery and detect regressions. See: BGP Route Monitoring

How do I connect a BGP path change to real user or traffic impact?

Correlate the routing event time window with traffic shifts, performance signals, and the destinations or services affected. This links “the path changed” to what users and customers actually experienced. See: BGP Route Monitoring

How do I choose peering targets that reduce transit cost?

Start with traffic-driven discovery: identify high-volume destinations you currently deliver via transit, quantify offload potential, then prioritize peers based on ratios and footprint overlap. See: Optimize Peering and Transit

How do I evaluate whether to peer or use transit for a destination?

Compare delivery paths, performance outcomes, and effective cost for that destination across transit vs potential peering options, then verify improvement after changes. See: Optimize Peering and Transit

How do I calculate effective cost per Mbps for each interconnect?

Combine delivered traffic volume with normalized contract pricing so each transit, peering, IX, or PNI link has an effective cost per Mbps you can trend and optimize. See: Reduce Network Spend

How do I benchmark CDN delivery mix (on-net vs off-net) and performance?

Measure delivery by market and interconnect type, track on-net/off-net mix, and compare performance outcomes alongside cost drivers to justify CDN and interconnect decisions. See: Grow Subscriber Revenue

How do I prepare for a peering partner business review?

Use consistent reporting on traffic volumes, ratios, and destination mix, and show how routing and interconnect changes affected performance and cost. See: Peering and Interconnection

How can I reduce transit spend without degrading performance?

Identify high-volume destinations and the paths they take today, then shift traffic via peering/IX/PNI where it improves cost while validating delivery performance to prevent regressions. See: Optimize Peering and Transit

How do I use traffic and cost data to understand customer margin?

Tie delivered traffic and interconnect cost to customers, services, and markets so you can identify where cost-to-serve is rising and adjust pricing or routing strategy with evidence. See: Reduce Network Spend

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Related Kentipedia reading

• What Is BGP? Border Gateway Protocol Explained
• What is Internet Peering?
• IP Transit vs Peering
• BGP Route Leaks
• BGP Hijacking

Updated: February 4, 2026