About
BGP communities are widely used by network operators to express routing policy, yet their operational use, visibility, and interpretation remain only partially understood.
Communities in the Wild brings together network operators, Internet measurement researchers, and tool developers to discuss operational practice, measurement methodologies, observability, validation, and emerging research directions related to BGP communities.
The workshop will combine invited presentations with moderated discussions and community exchange. Its goal is to strengthen collaboration between the operational routing and Internet measurement communities, identify open measurement challenges, and help shape future research and operational practice.
News
- The workshop was accepted as part of the ACM IMC 2026 Workshop and Hackathon Program.
- Workshop website launched.
Program
The program below is tentative and will be updated as speakers and scheduling are confirmed.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 09:00–09:15 | Welcome |
| 09:15–10:15 | Session I: Operational Practice Invited presentations on operational use in a global CDN and BGP communities at IXP route servers, followed by discussion. |
| 10:15–10:45 | Coffee break |
| 10:45–12:00 | Session II: Measurement, Visibility, and Interpretation Invited presentations on measurement tooling, experimental validation, and community visibility in route collectors, followed by discussion. |
| 12:00–13:30 | Lunch |
| 13:30–14:45 | Session III: Applications and Emerging Directions Invited presentations on communities in geolocation and intent-based networking, followed by discussion. |
| 14:45–15:15 | Coffee break |
| 15:15–16:30 | Open Discussion Moderated discussion on observability, documentation, tooling gaps, validation, and future collaboration. |
| 16:30–17:00 | Wrap-up Summary, community priorities, future collaborations, and next steps. |
Invited Speakers (Tentative)
The following individuals have expressed preliminary interest in participating or contributing to the workshop. The final program will depend on scheduling and availability.
- Cloudflare — Vasileios Giotsas
- DE-CIX — Daniel Wagner
- IPinfo — Oliver Gasser
- PEERING — Italo Cunha
- RIPE NCC / RIPE RIS — Ties de Kock
- University of Virginia — Yixin Sun
- UCLouvain — Cristel Pelsser
- Columbia University — Ethan Katz-Bassett
Participation
The workshop welcomes participation from network operators, Internet exchange operators, CDN and cloud providers, Internet measurement and routing security researchers, geolocation and measurement platform providers, and developers of routing analysis tools.
Participation details and any registration requirements will be posted here once they are confirmed by ACM IMC 2026.
Organizers
Venue
The workshop will take place on Monday, October 12, 2026, co-located with ACM IMC 2026 in Karlsruhe, Germany. Room and venue details will be announced by the conference organizers.
Contact
For questions about the workshop, contact Thomas Krenc.