[Csci551-talk] [Q] Internet Path Inflation Due...

ramesh sarangarajan sarangar@usc.edu
Mon, 03 Feb 2003 11:13:28 -0800


<BODY><P>Their earlier paper - <A href="http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/tangmunarunkit01impact.html">http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/tangmunarunkit01impact.html</A>&nbsp;&nbsp;describes the methodology for generating AS overlay maps. <BR><BR>AS level topology was constructed mainly from the oregon route server bgp dumps. <BR>Anybody can get them from <A href="telnet://route-views.oregon-ix.net/">telnet://route-views.oregon-ix.net/</A>&nbsp;- use "show ip bgp"&nbsp;command. The archives are available&nbsp;at <A href="http://archive.routeviews.org/">http://archive.routeviews.org/</A></P>
<P>But, as BGP&nbsp;reveals only the AS preferences instead of actual physical AS connections, the info&nbsp;from "routeviews" is always incomplete. So, other sources like&nbsp;"Internet Routing Registries" like RADB, RIPE (the European registry) are used to fill in the gaps. ( For example <A href="http://www.radb.net/cgi-bin/radb/whois.cgi?obj=128.125.19.146">http://www.radb.net/cgi-bin/radb/whois.cgi?obj=128.125.19.146</A>&nbsp;gives the IRR record for USC web server; <A href="http://www.radb.net/cgi-bin/radb/whois.cgi?obj=AS226">http://www.radb.net/cgi-bin/radb/whois.cgi?obj=AS226</A>&nbsp;gives the record for the corresponding AS)</P>
<P>As providing routing policies in IRRs is optional, some ISPs don't do that. Internet "looking glass" sites like <A href="http://www.traceroute.org">http://www.traceroute.org</A>&nbsp;can help providing more details.</P>
<P>To answer your question, I think the difference is that&nbsp; "actual" AS map&nbsp;was obtained directly from BGP dumps like the Oregon route server (which can be augmented by IRRs &amp; looking glasses); <A href="http://topology.eecs.umich.edu/archive/asgraph.tar.gz">http://topology.eecs.umich.edu/archive/asgraph.tar.gz</A>&nbsp;is one such dataset; the "overlay" maps are drawn on the top of the router-level map (obtained by their mercator tool) using the same info from Oregon+RADB. They built the overlay map to get the actual inter-AS router links. The reason they compared the macroscopic properties of the actual &amp; overlay maps is that they used approximation techniques (like collapsing the disjoint nodes of same AS to the nearest AS) in the overlay constructions.</P>
<P>Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.</P>
<P>-Ramesh</P>
<P><BR><BR>----- Original Message ----- <BR>From: paavany jayanty &lt;pjayanty@usc.edu&gt; <BR>Date: Sunday, February 2, 2003 4:11 am <BR>Subject: [Csci551-talk] [Q] Internet Path Inflation Due... <BR><BR>&gt; Hi, <BR>&gt; <BR>&gt; In the Internet Path Inflation .... paper there is a mention of <BR>&gt; how overlay AS maps are obtained. <BR>&gt; <BR>&gt; I cannot quite get the difference between the "actual AS map" and <BR>&gt; the AS overlay map. <BR>&gt; <BR>&gt; How are the actual AS maps obtained? <BR>&gt; <BR>&gt; <BR>&gt; <BR>&gt; </P></BODY>