InterTubes

Abstract

The complexity and enormous costs of installing new longhaul fiber-optic infrastructure has led to a significant amount of infrastructure sharing in previously installed conduits. In this paper, we study the characteristics and implications of infrastructure sharing by analyzing the long-haul fiber-optic network in the US.We start by using fiber maps provided by tier-1 ISPs and major cable providers to construct a map of the long-haul US fiber-optic infrastructure. We also rely on previously underutilized data sources in the form of public records from federal, state, and municipal agencies to improve the fidelity of our map. We quantify the resulting map's 1 connectivity characteristics and confirm a clear correspondence between long-haul fiber-optic, roadway, and railway infrastructures. Next, we examine the prevalence of high-risk links by mapping end-to-end paths resulting from large-scale traceroute campaigns onto our fiber-optic infrastructure map. We show how both risk and latency (i.e., propagation delay) can be reduced by deploying new links along previously unused transportation corridors and rights-of-way. In particular, focusing on a subset of high-risk links is sufficient to improve the overall robustness of the network to failures. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings on issues related to performance, net neutrality, and policy decision-making.

Nautilus: A Framework for Cross-Layer Cartography of Submarine Cables and IP Links

“…Single-layer mapping: Past work in Internet mapping mainly focused on individual layers and can be broadly classified as mapping at the (i) the physical layer [52,70,71] where each link represents a physical cable between two locations, (ii) the interface level [44,59,82,83], (iii) the router level [58, 60-63, 73, 77, 84], (iv) the PoP level [53,55,64,68,79,81,86], and (v) the AS level [42,43,48,69,72,76,78].…”

“…The most common methods employed by various mapping architectures are either (i) aggregation-based, or (ii) constraint-based approaches. Examples of aggregation-based solutions include physical layer techniques [52,70,71] that collect data from various public and private sources and aggregate them to generate the mapping. An example of a constraint-based approach is the router-level mapping solution, HOT [84], which uses various network constraint parameters and optimizes an objective function to generate a mapping.…”

“…Past work on Internet mapping was largely confined to specific layers of the Internet and did not support crosslayer mapping [50,75]; for example, mapping of physical cables [52,70,71], interfaces [44,59,82,83], routers [62,67,73,74], PoPs [53,64,79,81], and ASes [43,48,78]. Recently, iGDB [45] put forward the first cross-layer mapping framework for the Internet.…”

A hop away from everywhere: A view of the intercontinental long-haul infrastructure

“…In related work focusing on the domestic long-haul infrastructure of the US, Durairajan et al [27] defines LHLs as those that connect major city-pairs, spanning at least 30 miles or connecting population centers of at least 100,000 people. We focus instead on intercontinental LHLs and our definition of LHL depends, instead, on a latency distribution of a measured path, a latency threshold and the location of both ends of LHLs.…”

“…A handful of previous studies have focused on long-haul connectivity. Durairajan et al [27] investigated the domestic long-haul infrastructure of the United States using information extracted from optical cable deployments along pre-existing transport infrastructure. Bishof et al [10] puts forward a research agenda focused on the criticality of the submarine cable network.…”