- BGP's ORIGIN attribute indicates how a route was injected, with values IGP (interior), EGP (obsolete), and INCOMPLETE (unknown).
- RFC 4271 states ORIGIN should not be modified, but ~70% of observed paths have altered ORIGIN values, often changed to IGP by transit providers to attract traffic.
- Experiments using BGP Anycast announcements showed nearly 10% of direct peers rewrite ORIGIN to IGP, with Tier-1 ASes disproportionately involved.
- ORIGIN manipulation impacts path selection, redirecting traffic and generating revenue for rewriters, undermining fairness.
- Deprecation of ORIGIN is proposed, with a starting point of setting all routes to IGP by default.