Route servers provide console access to various router functions. They are invaluable in the hands of an expert who wants to see what his network looks like from the outside. Commands like show ip bgp 1.2.3.4 are probably the largest reason route servers are useful, but traceroute and ping are frequently also available.
There are lots of lists out there. Most of them don’t bother checking the route servers, or if they do, they only check that they’re reachable. Several route servers are reachable, but aren’t actually useful, because they ask for authentication before letting you look at anything.
This list is different. All route servers are checked periodically. New route servers are discovered automatically from various other aggregators. Fingerprinting techniques are used in an attempt to determine what sort of route server is at the address specified.
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AS and Peers deserve some explanation. AS is the AS that the route server’s IP address is advertised from, which usually (but not always) the AS of the route server. Similarly, Peers is the number of Autonomous Systems that are known to be directly connected to the route server’s AS, not the number of BGP peers on the route server.
