Network Topology Inference Based on End-to-End Measurements

Abstract--We consider using traceroute-like end-to-end measurement to infer the underlay topology for a group of hosts. One major issue is the measurement cost. Given hosts in an asymmetric network without anonymous routers, traditionally full ( 1) traceroutes are needed to determine the underlay topology. We investigate how to efficiently infer an underlay topology with low measurement cost, and propose a heuristic called Max-Delta. In the heuristic, a server selects appropriate host-pairs to measure in each iteration so as to reveal the most undiscovered information on the underlay. We further observe that the presence of anonymous routers significantly distorts and inflates the inferred topology. Previous research has shown that obtaining both exact and approximate topology in the presence of anonymous routers under certain consistency constraints is intractable. We hence propose fast algorithms on how to practically construct an approximate topology by relaxing some constraints. We...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: JSAC
• Authors: Xing Jin, Wai-Pun Ken Yiu, S.-H. Gary Chan, Yajun Wang
• Keywords: Anonymous Routers, JSAC 2006, Measurements, Underlay Topology