Architecture Overview

The ASN Risk Platform follows a microservices architecture optimized for high-throughput data ingestion and low-latency queries.

System Diagram

                    ┌─────────────────┐
                    │   RIPE RIS      │
                    │   BGP Stream    │
                    └────────┬────────┘
                             │
                             ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                        INGESTOR                              │
│  • WebSocket client for BGP stream                          │
│  • Threat feed fetcher (Spamhaus, URLhaus)                  │
│  • Batch writer for ClickHouse                              │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                             │
              ┌──────────────┴──────────────┐
              ▼                              ▼
┌─────────────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────────────┐
│       CLICKHOUSE        │    │         REDIS           │
│  • bgp_events           │    │  • Task queue           │
│  • threat_events        │    │  • Result cache         │
│  • asn_score_history    │    │                         │
│  • Materialized views   │    │                         │
└─────────────────────────┘    └─────────────────────────┘
              │                              │
              └──────────────┬───────────────┘
                             ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                         ENGINE                               │
│  • Celery worker                                            │
│  • Score calculation                                        │
│  • Signal aggregation                                       │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                             │
                             ▼
              ┌─────────────────────────┐
              │       POSTGRESQL        │
              │  • asn_registry         │
              │  • asn_signals          │
              │  • asn_whitelist        │
              └─────────────────────────┘
                             │
                             ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                           API                                │
│  • FastAPI                                                  │
│  • Read-only queries                                        │
│  • Authentication                                           │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                             │
                             ▼
                    ┌─────────────────┐
                    │     CLIENTS     │
                    └─────────────────┘

Component Responsibilities

Ingestor

Handles all external data ingestion:

• Maintains persistent WebSocket connection to RIPE RIS
• Parses BGP UPDATE messages
• Fetches threat intelligence feeds on schedule
• Batches writes to ClickHouse for throughput optimization

Engine

Performs scoring calculations:

• Celery worker processing task queue
• Queries ClickHouse for time-series aggregations
• Calculates weighted risk scores
• Updates PostgreSQL with current state

API

Serves client requests:

• FastAPI with async support
• Reads from PostgreSQL for current scores
• Reads from ClickHouse for historical data
• Implements authentication and rate limiting

Design Principles

Separation of Write and Read Paths

The write path (Ingestor to ClickHouse) is optimized for throughput. The read path (API from PostgreSQL) is optimized for latency.

Event Sourcing

All BGP events are stored immutably in ClickHouse. The current state in PostgreSQL is derived from these events.

Horizontal Scalability

• Ingestor: Single instance (WebSocket limitation)
• Engine: Multiple Celery workers
• API: Multiple instances behind load balancer
• Databases: Replication for read scaling

Fault Tolerance

• Redis persistence for task durability
• PostgreSQL WAL for crash recovery
• ClickHouse replication for data durability

---

Two-Tier Caching

Every ASN lookup passes through a two-level cache before hitting PostgreSQL.

Request
   │
   ▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  L1: In-process TTLCache    │  maxsize=5000, ~30s TTL
│  Key: score:v3:{asn}        │  (Python cachetools, per worker)
└─────────────────────────────┘
   │ MISS
   ▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  L2: Redis                  │  5-minute TTL
│  Key: score:v3:{asn}        │  Shared across all API workers
└─────────────────────────────┘
   │ MISS
   ▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  PostgreSQL (source of truth)│
└─────────────────────────────┘

The X-Cache-Tier response header tells the client which layer served the request: L1, L2, or DB.

Special keys:

• stats:asn_total_count — total scored ASN count, cached 300 seconds
• PeeringDB data — cached under peeringdb:{asn} for 86400 seconds (24 h)

Cache invalidation: DELETE /v1/internal/cache/{asn} (internal endpoint, not exposed at nginx level).

---

Real-Time Event Bus

Score update events are published to a Redis Pub/Sub channel after each scoring cycle. The WebSocket endpoint subscribes to this channel and fans out to all connected clients.

Engine scores AS64496
   │
   ▼ PUBLISH events:asn_updates
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│         Redis Pub/Sub       │
│   channel: events:asn_updates│
└─────────────────────────────┘
   │ SUBSCRIBE
   ▼
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  API WebSocket handler      │
│  asyncio.Queue(maxsize=100) │
│  HEARTBEAT_INTERVAL = 30s   │
│  SEND_TIMEOUT = 5s          │
└─────────────────────────────┘
   │
   ▼ JSON messages
┌─────────────────────────────┐
│  WebSocket clients          │
└─────────────────────────────┘

Backpressure: if a client's queue exceeds 100 messages the connection is closed with WebSocket code 1008 (Policy Violation) to prevent memory exhaustion.

---

Rate Limiting

Rate limiting is enforced in nginx via a Lua sliding-window log algorithm.

• Window: 60 seconds
• Default limit: 100 requests/window
• Key: per client IP (rl:{client_ip})
• Storage: Redis sorted set (entries older than 60s are pruned on each request)

Headers returned on every request:

Header	Description
X-RateLimit-Limit	Maximum requests allowed per window
X-RateLimit-Remaining	Remaining requests for current window
X-RateLimit-Reset	Unix timestamp of when the window resets
Retry-After	Seconds to wait before retrying (HTTP 429 only)

---

Request Lifecycle

Client
  │
  ▼ HTTP/WebSocket
┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  nginx (port 80)                          │
│  • /api/ → reverse proxy to asn-api:8000  │
│  • Rate limit check via Lua script        │
│  • Security headers added                 │
│  • WebSocket upgrade at /api/v1/stream    │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
  │
  ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  FastAPI (port 8000)                      │
│  1. API key validation middleware         │
│  2. X-Trace-ID generation                 │
│  3. L1 cache lookup                       │
│  4. L2 Redis lookup                       │
│  5. PostgreSQL/ClickHouse query (on miss) │
│  6. ORJSONResponse serialization          │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘

---

Observability

Prometheus Metrics

The API exposes metrics at /metrics (Prometheus format, no auth required). Add to your Prometheus scrape config:

- job_name: asn-api
  static_configs:
    - targets: ['asn-api:8000']
  metrics_path: /metrics

Grafana Dashboards

Four pre-built dashboards ship with the platform under services/dashboard/dashboards/:

Dashboard	Purpose
mission_control.json	High-level KPIs
api_performance.json	Latency, error rate, cache hit ratios
system_health.json	CPU, memory, DB connection pools
forensics.json	BGP event rates, threat signal trends
topology.json	ASN relationship graph

Distributed Tracing

The X-Trace-ID header (format: {unix_ts}-{hex_suffix}) is attached to every response and all internal log lines. Use it to correlate API access logs with Engine task logs.