Internet Topology Discovery

Abstract

Abstract. Since the nineties, the Internet has seen an impressive growth, in terms of users, intermediate systems (such as routers), autonomous systems, or applications. In parallel to this growth, the research community has been looking for obtaining and modeling the Internet topology, i.e., how the various elements of the network interconnect between themselves. An impressive amount of work has been done regarding how to collect data and how to analyse and model it. This chapter reviews main approaches for gathering Internet topology data. We first focus on hop limited probing, i.e., traceroute-like probing. We review large-scale tracerouting projects and discuss traceroute limitations and how they are mitigated by new techniques or extensions. Hop limited probing can reveal an IP interface vision of the Internet. We next focus on techniques for aggregating several IP interfaces of a given router into a single identifier. This leads to a router level vision of the topology. The aggregation can be done through a process called alias resolution. We also review a technique based on IGMP probing that silently collect all multicast interfaces of a router into a single probe. We next refine the router level topology by adding subnet information. We finish this chapter by discussing the AS level topology, in particular the relationships between ASes and the induced hierarchy.

Understanding the impact of network infrastructure changes using large-scale measurement platforms

“…This has been motivated by the emerging need to not only assess the broadband quality but also to verify service offers against contractual agreements. Platforms focussing on inferring the Internet topology have been surveyed in the past [22], [23], [24]. Metrics and tools usually employed in active measurements have also been surveyed [29], [30].…”

“…In this dissertation [1], we expand the goal by using large-scale measurement platforms to understand the impact of network infrastructure changes. [22] Hamed Haddadi et al [23] Benoit Donnet et al [24] Bajpai et al [2] Fig. 1.…”

“…• Survey on performance measurement platforms − Initially, measurement platforms were deployed to measure the topology of the Internet. Such topology measurement platforms have been surveyed in the past [22], [23], [24].…”

Compact mixed integer linear programming models to the minimum weighted tree reconstruction problem

“…There are several techniques to reconstruct a network topology. For instance, one such technique can use ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) commands such as ping and traceroute [17,19,33]. However, these techniques require the cooperation of all the internal network devices, which is, most of the time, not possible, due to political and security issues.…”

A Survey on Internet Performance Measurement Platforms and Related Standardization Efforts

“…network topology have been surveyed in the past [1], [3]. Techniques used to mine the active measurement data to model and generate the Internet topology have been surveyed as well [2].…”