HE.net BGP origin attribute rewriting

[Daniel Suchy <danny () danysek cz>]

Hello,

we discovered, that at least Hurricane Electric (HE, AS 6939) does
rewrite BGP origin attribute unconditionally in all routes traversing
their network. This mandatory, but probably not widely known/used
attribute should not be changed by any speaker except originating router
(RFC 4271, section 5.1.1). HE rewrites origin for all routes.

I tried communicate this issue with HE, but they're not willing change
their configuration and respect mentioned RFC document, and they're
claiming, that another networks (Level3 was mentioned exactly) does
similar thing. In my experience, there're not so many service providers
doing that.

What's your view on this, do you think, that service providers can
simply ignore existing RFCs?

With regards,
Daniel