The Workshop on Internet Topology (WIT) Report

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The Workshop on Internet Topology (WIT) Report

• ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review Volume
  37 ,  Issue 1  (January 2007)

Dmitri Krioukov CAIDA Fan Chung UCSD kc claffy
CAIDA Marina Fomenkov CAIDA Alessandro Vespignani
Indiana University Walter Willinger ATT Research
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What we need to know to understand Internet
Topology

• As and router level topology generation
  mechanisms.
• Degree based methods (PLRG, BA, BRITE, BT, INET)
• Structural methods (GT-ITM)
• Canonical topologies
• General model of Random Graphs (GRG)
• Power law Random Graph (PLRG)

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Outline

• Motivation of different people interested in this
  area
• Different models
• Different way for data collection
• Open Problems
• Recommendations

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Motivation

• networking researchers
• what a node or a link represents
• physically meaningful topologies ie router-level
  connectivity
• logical constructs such as AS-level topology, or
  overlay networks such as the WWW graph, email
  graph, P2P networks
• how new technologies, policies, or economic
  conditions will impact the Internets
  connectivity structure at different layers.
• physicists
• Internet is just one of many examples of a
  complex network.
• Physicists search for inherent principles shaping
  small and large-scale network patterns.
• They want to find universal laws on application
  domains.

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Motivation

• Mathematicians
• Internet topology analysis, having mathematicians
  involved will stimulate the development of
  suitable mathematical apparatuses.
• Engineers
• need understand the Internet structure since
  performance of several applications and protocols
  depends strongly on peculiarities of an
  underlying network.
• Ex Recent research suggests that observed
  Internet-like topologies are particularly
  well-structured for routing efficiency (A. Brady
  and L. Cowen, Compact routing on power-law
  graphs with additive stretch, in ALENEX, 2006. )
  but the existing Internet routing architecture
  does not exploit this efficiency. The knowledge
  and understanding of the topological properties
  of the Internet should help engineers to optimize
  future technological developments.

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Data

• Mathematicians do not need data at all
• Physicists are interested in data to support
  their models, but are not especially concerned
  much about the data quality
• They both rely on Networking community
• Engineers are the closest to collecting actual
  data, at least about their own networks. However,
  data ownership and stewardship are complex and
  highly charged issues with numerous social,
  political, liability, and security implications.
• It is the responsibility of all data users to
  educate themselves on the incompleteness,
  inaccuracy, and other deficiencies of these
  measurements and to avoid over interpretation.

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Data Collection Techniques

• Simulation technique for random graph generator
• Router level graph
• Trace route over months, over different
  monitoring points to collect data
• WHOIS database
• Whois databases enable you to search for
  information about the people, computers,
  organizations, and name servers. top-level
  domains ".com", ".net", and ".org" can be
  searched from their online database ie.
  http//www.whois.sc/
• - Search domain names using partial word(s) in
  Domain Search.- Partial word(s) searching on
  active domain names ("bill gates")- IP address
  searching ("66.218.71.198")- Full domain (
  nameintel.com goes directly to whois)

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Data Collection Techniques

• What is AS? IP with common Routing policies
• What is BGP? - organizations can run BGP using
  private AS numbers to an ISP that connects all
  those organizations to the Internet
• BGP data collection (Autonomous Systems AS level
  graph)
• BGP tables are collected from Oregon route
  Server, this connects to the various ISP for
  collecting BGP table. http//www.routeviews.org
• The ability to infer AS peering relationship,
  from BGP routing tables depends largely on
  inter-AS business contracts. If a business
  contract does not permit a given inter-AS route
  to be used by a third party, BGP does not
  advertise this information to the global
  Internet.
• Internet Routing Registry (IRR) databases

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Models

• Static - constructing statistical ensembles of
  random networks with certain characteristics
  matching values measured in the real Internet.
• Dynamic - trying to reproduce the details of the
  Internet evolution/growth
• Networking researchers
• descriptive in the sense of matching certain
  graph-theoretic properties
• provide context for known structural or
  architectural features of Internet
• Physicists and Mathematicians
• Lets leave it

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(OPEN PROBLEMS) better Internet topology data

• Incompleteness of the data
• classical Erd?os-Renyi random graphs, are
  extremely unlikely to represent real Internet
  topologies measured from multiple vantage points
• inference of probability distributions specifying
  possible quantitative deviations of real
  topologies from measured ones remains largely an
  open problem
• lack of observation points, finite number of
  destinations probed, inability to capture other
  layers and disambiguate between high-degree nodes
  and opaque clouds
• We need targeted measurements focused on
  particular geographic areas.
• Existing measurement tools have not demonstrated
  the ability to scale up to measure link and/or
  node properties across realistic networks
• Internet measurement would ideally progress from
  measuring only the intra- and inter-AS topology
  at the router- and AS-level (An empirical
  approach to modeling inter-AS traffic matrices,
  in IMC, 2005.)

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(OPEN PROBLEMS) Modeling

• Descriptive models strive to reproduce some
  graph-theoretic properties of the Internet and
  usually are not concerned with their
  network-specific interpretation. (The Internet
  AS-level topology Three data sources and one
  definitive metric, Computer Communication
  Review, vol. 36, no. 1, 2006. )
• explanatory models acknowledge domain-specific
  constraints (traffic conditions,
  cost-minimization requirements, technological
  reality ) while attempting to simulate the
  fundamental principles and factors responsible
  for the structure and evolution of network
  topology. But which factors are critical is open
  problem.

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(OPEN PROBLEMS) Modeling

• Future developments in the field of Internet
  modeling may include the following advancements
• Annotated models of an ISPs router-level
  topology, where nodes are labeled with router
  capacity, type, or role, and link labels describe
  delay, distance, or bandwidth
• annotated models of the Internets AS-level
  topology, where node labels include AS-specific
  information, e.g., number and/or locations of
  PoPs, customer base, and link labels reflect
  peering relationships
• models built around parameters closely related to
  real use of the network, e.g., routing models
  that define and utilize routing-related
  parameters such as robustness, fairness, outage,
  etc.
• dynamic, evolutionary models of the Internet
  deriving simple rules for network evolution from
  actual technological constraints, e.g., from
  known Cisco router characteristics.

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(OPEN PROBLEMS) General Theory

• Internet is complex engineered system because
• At the AS level, the Internet topology is a
  result of local business decisions independently
  made by each AS
• On the other hand, at the router level the
  Internet topology is a product of
  human-controlled technological optimizations
  aiming to minimize cost and maximize efficiency

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(OPEN PROBLEMS) General Theory

• Traditional graph theory is not suitable for
  dealing with dynamic network structures that
  change over time.
• Multiple layers in the Internet protocol stack
  have their own corresponding topologies, i.e.,
  fiber, optical, router, AS,Web, P2P graphs, that
  describe significantly different aspects of
  Internet connectivity.(Multiscale Modelling and
  Simulation, Springer, Berlin, 2004 )
• Need to development of new approaches,
  techniques, and tools for measuring or inferring,
  AS related traffic.
• Interplay political, social, economical,
  technological diversity
• For example, is the router-level topology of a
  large Korean ISP different because of their
  atypically high penetration of broadband
  deployment, or importance of gaming traffic?
• small Chinese Internet AS-level topology
  preserves the structural characteristics of the
  global Internet (Chinese Internet AS-level
  topology, 2006, arXivcs.NI/0511101.)

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RECOMMENDATIONS

• Interdisciplinary communication remains a serious
  bottleneck, important to read, try to understand,
  and cite publications from other fields
• A lack of comprehensive and high-quality
  topological and traffic data represents a serious
  obstacle to successful Internet topology
  modeling, and especially model validation.
• outreach to Internet registries, e.g., ARIN,
  RIPE, and other databases regarding access and
  use of their data for research purposes
• develop new techniques and tools to collect the
  data for the next generation of Internet models
• Concentrate on robustness
• support repositories of publicly available
  topology and traffic data
• DatCat - facilitate sharing of data sets with
  researchers in pursuit of more reproducible
  scientific results (http//imdc.datcat.org.)
• convert theoretical results into practical
  solutions
• Can a GENI-like facility help in tackling some of
  the research challenges identified in this
  report, and if so, how?