PeerCortex: Why I Built a Network Intelligence Platform

What happens when you're fighting jetlag at 4 AM and your brain is still running at 150% after an incredible BGP workshop with Philip Smith and Warren Finch?

You build the tool you always wished existed.

That's the real origin story of PeerCortex. Not a carefully planned product roadmap. Not a market analysis. Just a hotel room in New Zealand during nzNOG week, a laptop, and the kind of clarity that only comes when yesterday's workshop insights collide with tomorrow's morning coffee in a timezone your body hasn't accepted yet.

// the problem i couldn't stop thinking about

Philip and Warren had spent the day walking us through BGP security — RPKI deployment, route filtering best practices, the current state of ASPA. And sitting there, I kept thinking: why do I need five different tabs open to check the health of a single network?

PeeringDB for peering policy and IX presence. RIPE Stat for route origin validation. bgp.he.net for upstream/downstream neighbors. IRR Explorer for registration consistency. bgproutes.io for propagation data. And none of them talk to each other.

Every network operator I know does this same dance. Open tab. Query ASN. Copy result. Open next tab. Query again. Try to mentally correlate the data. It's 2026 and we're still doing network intelligence with copy-paste.

// one query, everything, instantly

Enter any ASN. Get everything. Network profile, peering policy, facilities, IX presence, upstream and downstream neighbors with resolved AS names. RPKI compliance with per-prefix ROA validation. Route propagation across IPv4 and IPv6. BGP communities. Blocklist status. MANRS compliance. All from a single query.

The part I'm most excited about is the ASPA Intelligence. Full RFC-compliant implementation of draft-ietf-sidrops-aspa-verification. Upstream and downstream path verification. Valley detection for route leaks. AS_SET flagging. Provider audit comparing declared vs. observed providers. Readiness scoring. And auto-generated ASPA object templates you can paste directly into your RIR portal.

// the 13-check health report

For any ASN, PeerCortex runs 13 automated checks:

• Bogon detection
• Blocklist screening
• ROA validation and RPKI coverage
• IRR registration consistency
• MANRS compliance
• BGP visibility across peers
• Reverse DNS completeness
• Abuse contact availability
• IX route server participation
• BGP community analysis
• ASPA readiness
• Upstream diversity
• IPv4/IPv6 announcement balance

Traffic-light scoring with a 0–100 health score. Opinionated, because I tuned the weights based on what actually matters when you're troubleshooting at 2 AM.

// 3,294 vantage points via bgproutes.io

The bgproutes.io integration gives PeerCortex visibility from 3,294+ vantage points worldwide. For every prefix, you see ROV status and ASPA validation from the next-generation BGP data collection platform. This is data that didn't exist in a unified view anywhere before.

// single server, no database, five minutes to deploy

The entire application runs as a single Node.js server. No framework. No database. No build step. That's intentional. I wanted something that anyone could deploy in five minutes and that would Just Work.

docker compose up -d — or — npx peercortex

No login. No signup. Completely free. MIT licensed.

// why open source

The networking community has given me everything I know. 20+ years of NOGs, NANOG, DENOG, RIPE meetings, nzNOG. People sharing knowledge freely. PeerCortex is my way of giving back.

Thank you Philip Smith and Warren Finch for the workshop that made my brain refuse to sleep. And thank you to PeeringDB, RIPE NCC, Route Views, and bgproutes.io for keeping network data open and accessible.

Sometimes the best code comes from that strange timezone where yesterday's workshop insights meet tomorrow's morning coffee.

Try it: peercortex.org | Source: GitHub