Vantage Point Placement Based on Inference of AS-level Connections

Abstract

Internet topology data is useful for evaluating new protocols, services, and vulnerabilities in network infrastructures. To infer the AS-level topology, some projects deploy BGP routers worldwide, mainly on IXPs, collect and publish BGP routing information from other ASes called Vantage Points. Deploying more routers on various IXPs will make the topology data precise, but it is hard to deploy a lot of routers because of administrative costs. So, we carefully choose locations where we can obtain new topological information with a small number of new routers. In this study, we investigate which ASes and IXPs should be used as Vantage Points with a small number of additional routers. This work consists of two stages. First, we analyze current BGP routing information available to infer currently unobserved but possibly existing connections, and find that such connections tend to be between two ASes that have a high percentage not including 100% of common adjacent ASes. Second, we calculate which IXPs should be more suitable for installing BGP routers for the collection using the results on the first stage and data of ASes on IXPs. We also discuss IXPs recommended to deploy new routers are in different countries where many ASes are allocated.