Detection, understanding, and prevention of traceroute measurement artifacts

DOI10.1016/J.COMNET.2007.11.017MaRDI QIDQ2482001zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Fabien Viger, Brice Augustin, Xavier Cuvellier, Clémence Magnien, Matthieu Latapy, Timur Friedman, Renata Teixeira

Publication date 16 April 2008

Published in Computer Networks (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0904.2733

zbMATH Keywords

load balancingtraceroutemeasurement artifactnetwork topology measurement

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Performance evaluation, queueing, and scheduling in the context of computer systems (68M20) Network design and communication in computer systems (68M10)

Abstract: Traceroute is widely used: from the diagnosis of network problems to the assemblage of internet maps. Unfortu- nately, there are a number of problems with traceroute methodology, which lead to the inference of erroneous routes. This paper studies particular structures arising in nearly all traceroute measurements. We characterize them as "loops", "cycles", and "diamonds". We iden- tify load balancing as a possible cause for the appear- ance of false loops, cycles and diamonds, i.e., artifacts that do not represent the internet topology. We pro- vide a new publicly-available traceroute, called Paris traceroute, which, by controlling the packet header con- tents, provides a truer picture of the actual routes that packets follow. We performed measurements, from the perspective of a single source tracing towards multiple destinations, and Paris traceroute allowed us to show that many of the particular structures we observe are indeed traceroute measurement artifacts.

Recommendations

• Exploring networks with traceroute-like probes: Theory and simulations
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• Bias Reduction in Traceroute Sampling – Towards a More Accurate Map of the Internet
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Cited in

(4)

• Shape measures of random increasing \(k\)-trees
• A measurement study of persistent forwarding loops on the Internet
• Describing and simulating internet routes
• Dynamic traceroute visualization at multiple abstraction levels

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