Read BGP dump files right in your browser! Meet MRT Explorer on Cloudflare Radar!

Hey there, it's me, Shii-chan! Today I've got a tool that network fans are going to love.

Cloudflare Changelog developers.cloudflare.com

What was announced?

On Cloudflare's Changelog, there's news that a new tool called MRT Explorer has joined the Routing section of Cloudflare Radar.

MRT stands for Multi-Threaded Routing Toolkit, and it's the format of the BGP dump files published by route collectors like RIPE RIS and RouteViews. These files are packed with BGP announcements and withdrawals.

Why it matters

Until now, peeking inside MRT files meant installing dedicated command-line tools, or decompressing and parsing the files yourself. Even for looking into a BGP incident, you first had to set up an environment.

MRT Explorer reads those files entirely inside your browser and shows you what's in them. And here's the key point: the files are never uploaded to a server. Everything is processed in your own browser, so you can analyze your data without sending it anywhere.

What changes

Network engineers and researchers can now inspect the contents of an MRT file just by opening a browser whenever the idea strikes. No install, no upload. That first step toward chasing down routing anomalies or hijack-like behavior gets a lot lighter.

Dive Deep

There are several ways to load a file. You can pick a local file, drag and drop, or point it at a remote URL to fetch. It also handles gzip and bzip2 compression, so you can hand it a compressed file as-is. There's even a sample file to try it out.

The display is thorough too: for each BGP event it lays out the timestamp, prefix, AS path, OTC (Only to Customer), and community attributes. Open an event's detail modal and you can review that event's full JSON.

Sharing is easy as well. You can build a URL that captures the file's source in the query string, so you can pass along "look at this file in this state!" with a single link.

Wrap-up

• MRT Explorer was added to Routing on Cloudflare Radar
• Parses MRT-format BGP dump files entirely in your browser, with no server upload
• Supports local files, drag-and-drop, and remote URLs, and decompresses gzip / bzip2
• Lists timestamp, prefix, AS path, OTC, and community, plus per-event JSON
• Shareable URLs capture the file source so you can pass along the exact state

It's a perfect tool for network engineers who want to dig into routing data easily, and for researchers chasing routing incidents!