Stale Objects

Stale and Suspected Stale Route Objects

In the Route and Route6 administration pages of a maintainer, you may see some objects marked with either a Suspected Stale (yellow) or Stale (orange) badge.

When an object is marked as stale, it does not affect how it is queried.

The stale mark is for your information only.

What Does Stale Mean?

A route object is considered stale if it does not meet any of the following three criteria:

Direct Match:
- The prefix (pfx1) and origin (as1) in the RADb pair match the BGP pair (pfx2, as2).
- Alternatively, pfx1 is a subnet or supernet of pfx2.
Maintainer Match:
- The origin AS numbers are different (as1 ≠ as2), but the AUT-NUM objects for both AS numbers share one common maintainer.
- This accounts for proxy-registration.
- Additionally, pfx1 must be equal to pfx2 or be a subnet/supernet of pfx2.
AS Link Match:
- The origin AS numbers are different (as1 ≠ as2), but there is an IPv4 link between these AS numbers, as identified by CAIDA datasets.
- Additionally, pfx1 must be equal to pfx2 or be a subnet/supernet of pfx2.

Determining the Level of Staleness (Yellow or Orange)

The staleness level is based on a quality score that considers the following factors:

RIR Validation Status: Does the ASN legitimately own the routing object according to RIR records?
Age of Staleness: How long has the object been marked as "stale"?
Mistaken Registration of Bogons: Are there errors in registering invalid IP ranges?
Reputation: Assessed against trusted, third-party data sources.

What to Do If Your Object Is Marked as Stale:

Any object in Stale status may violate our terms of service and should be reviewed and possibly deleted by your team.
If you believe your object was incorrectly classified, please contact RADb Support.
To help resolve the issue, provide BGP data and other supporting evidence that demonstrate the object is not stale.