Code BGP, which develops commercial solutions for network operators, has raised a $1.5M seed investment from the Greek early-stage fund Marathon Venture Capital. The startup aims to expand its remote and physical team in Crete, attracting new clients on board, and further developing its product. Code BGP specializes in the security, visibility, and automation of internet gateway protocols and aims to make them more efficient, by simplifying the backbone operations of the Internet with its open-source proprietary software.
Border Gateway Protocols (BGP) are the backbone of the Internet, as they select the most efficient routes to deliver internet traffic across different networks. With the boom in the number of autonomous systems operated by internet service providers and big organizations, the complexity of navigating Internet traffic and configurations has also deepened. In turn, this underlying complexity makes it more probable for errors to occur and bad actors to take advantage of the holes in the system.
“We believe that facilitating visibility, security, and automation at the BGP level is a foundational innovation with an impact that transcends beyond the network itself. At the same time, we have been inspired by the deep expertise and the level of ambition of the team, and we look forward to working with Fontas, Vassilis, Lefteris and everyone at Code BGP to help build a better Internet” George Tziralis, a Partner at Marathon Venture Capital, commented.
For a safer, more efficient, and ethical Internet
The founders of Code BGP Xenofontas Dimitropoulos, Vasileios Kotronis, and Lefteris Manassakis are Greek researchers and open-source experts. The three of them are part of the founding team of Artemis, open-source software that tracks BGP configurations and alerts for errors. Their software is used by some of the biggest international network operators such as CenturyLink and Verizon. Combining their experience in Artemis with the academic research on Internet Security, Privacy, and Intelligence that they have done in the Hellenic Institute of Technology and Research (FORTH) at the University of Crete, the three of them founded Code BGP.
Their idea sprung from the mission to build a modern stack for BGP operations. That is why they developed a cloud-based platform for automatic management of an inventory of IP addresses and made their inventory public in real-time through open-sourced and data-driven APIs. Their solution thus makes BGP data and configuration easily accessible via APIs and reduces the risk of malicious attacks and errors in real-time.
What will come next for Code BGP?
Vasileios Kotronis, one of the founders of Code BGP, told The Recursive that their vision continues to be focused on embracing the complexity of BGP operations and simplifying them by applying modern DevOps practices. “We aim to make BGP fun to work with and easy to use, therefore simplifying operations, reducing costs for managing networks, and minimizing service disruptions. We focus on producing secure, reliable, trustworthy, and performant systems for these purposes,” Kotronis shared.
The team of Code BGP is currently in the R&D phase of building the first generation of their SaaS offering, which will specialize in automation and security services. In order to boost the resiliency and performance of their platform, the startup will be looking to hire more talent both in Crete and remotely in the next couple of months.
