A New Algorithm for Internet IP Level Topology Measurement

Abstract

Load balancing is one major cause of the false traceroute link problem in the Internet topology measurement field. In order to improve link inference correctness in the presence of load balancing, the impact of per-packet load balancing to link inference in the context of symmetric and asymmetric load balanced paths is analyzed. After that, a new algorithm for Internet IP level topology measurement is proposed. To evaluate the effectiveness of proposed algorithm, two experimental networks of symmetric and asymmetric per-packet load balanced paths are built. The corresponding measurement results of proposed algorithm are compared with classic traceroute and Paris traceroute. The evaluation results show that the proposed algorithm could improve the link inference correctness in the presence of per-packet load balancing.