Topology Discovery at the Router Level: A New Hybrid Tool Targeting ISP Networks

Fri, 06/03/2011 - 10:02 by Benoit Donnet

Abstract

For a long time, traceroute measurements combined with alias resolution methods have been the sole way to collect Internet router level maps. Recently, a new approach has been introduced with the use of a multicast management tool, mrinfo, and a recursive probing scheme. In this paper, after analyzing advantages and drawbacks of probing approaches based on traceroute and mrinfo, we propose a hybrid discovery tool, MERLIN (MEasure the Router Level of the INternet), mixing mrinfo and traceroute probes. Using a central server controlling a set of distributed vantage points in order to increase the exploration coverage while limiting the probing redundancy, the purpose of MERLIN is to provide an accurate router level map inside a targeted Autonomous System (AS). MERLIN also takes advantage of alias resolution methods to reconnect scattered multicast components. To evaluate the performance of MERLIN, we report experimental results describing its
efficiency in topology exploration and reconstruction of several ASes.

Authors
Pietro Marchetta, Pascal Mérindol, Benoit Donnet, Antonio Pescapé and Jean-Jacques Pansiot
Source
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication, Special Issue on Measurement of Internet Topologies, 2011.
Keywords
Network topology, Router level, IGMP probing, alias resolution, traceroute, MERLIN
Notes
to appear
Cite it
BibTex
Copyright
See here

IEEE Copyright Notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

ACM Copyright Notice: Copyright 1999 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page or intial screen of the document. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Publications Dept., ACM Inc., fax +1 (212) 869-0481, or permissions@acm.org.

Springer-Verlag LNCS Copyright Notice: The copyright of these contributions has been transferred to Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York. The copyright transfer covers the exclusive right to reproduce and distribute the contribution, including reprints, translations, photographic reproductions, microform, electronic form (offline, online), or any other reproductions of similar nature. Online available from Springer-Verlag LNCS series.