Towards an accurate AS-level traceroute tool

Traceroute is widely used to detect routing problems, characterize end-to-end paths, and discover the Internet topology. Providing an accurate list of the Autonomous Systems (ASes) along the forwarding path would make traceroute even more valuable to researchers and network operators. However, conventional approaches to mapping traceroute hops to AS numbers are not accurate enough. Address registries are often incomplete and out-of-date. BGP routing tables provide a better IP-to-AS mapping, though this approach has significant limitations as well. Based on our extensive measurements, about 10% of the traceroute paths have one or more hops that do not map to a unique AS number, and around 15% of the traceroute AS paths have an AS loop. In addition, some traceroute AS paths have extra or missing AS hops due to Internet eXchange Points, sibling ASes managed by the same institution, and ASes that do not advertise routes to their infrastructure. Using the BGP tables as a starting point, w...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: SIGCOMM
• Authors: Zhuoqing Morley Mao, Jennifer Rexford, Jia Wang, Randy H. Katz
• Keywords: BGP Routing Tables, SIGCOMM 2003, Traceroute, Traceroute As Paths