Topology Discovery in Heterogeneous IP Networks

Abstract— Knowledge of the up-to-date physical topology of an IP network is crucial to a number of critical network management tasks, including reactive and proactive resource management, event correlation, and root-cause analysis. Given the dynamic nature of today’s IP networks, keeping track of topology information manually is a daunting (if not impossible) task. Thus, effective algorithms for automatically discovering physical network topology are necessary. Earlier work has typically concentrated on either (a) discovering logical (i.e., layer-3) topology, which implies that the connectivity of all layer-2 elements (e.g., switches and bridges) is ignored, or (b) proprietary solutions targeting specific product families. In this paper, we present novel algorithms for discovering physical topology in heterogeneous (i.e., multi-vendor) IP networks. Our algorithms rely on standard SNMP MIB information that is widely supported by modern IP network elements and require no modificati...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Yuri Breitbart, Minos N. Garofalakis, Cliff Martin, Rajeev Rastogi, S. Seshadri, Abraham Silberschatz
• Keywords: Communications, INFOCOM 2000, Ip Network, Physical Network Topology, Topology