Combining SPF and Source Routing for an Efficient Probing Solution in IPv6 Topology Discovery

Abstract

For efficient network management, knowing the full topology of the network is important. Topology discovery using source routing and routing protocols are two well known methods to discover layer 3 connectivity. Source routing has the probing space explosion phenomenon that generates a large volume of traffic. As a result, source routing based approach takes a significant amount of time for network operators to discover and troubleshoot the whole network. Although routing protocol based approach like OSPFv3 discovers the network connectivity, the full IPv6 address cannot be discovered, as the approach only discovers the prefix portion of IPv6 addresses. This thesis proposes an efficient probing space reduction algorithm by combining source routing and OSPFv3. The idea is to apply source routing based on the information obtained from OSPFv3 based discovery for IPv6. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm reduces redundant probing significantly which is useful for network management.