Topology Inference from BGP Routing Dynamics

David G. Andersen, Nick Feamster, Hari Balakrishnan
2nd ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Workshop, Boston, MA, November 2002

This paper describes a method of inferring logical relationships between network prefixes within an Autonomous System (AS) using only passive monitoring of BGP messages. By clustering these prefixes based upon similarities between their update times, we create a hierarchy linking the prefixes within the larger AS. We can frequently identify groups of prefixes routed to the same ISP Point of Presence (PoP), despite the lack of identifying information in the BGP messages. Similarly, we observe disparate prefixes under common organizational control, or with long shared network paths. In addition to discovering interesting network characteristics, our passive method facilitates topology discovery by potentially reducing the number of active probes required in traditional traceroute-based Internet mapping mechanisms.

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Bibtex Entry:

@inproceedings{andersen2002topology,
   author =       "David G. Andersen and Nick Feamster and Hari Balakrishnan",
   title =        "{Topology Inference from BGP Routing Dynamics}",
   booktitle =    {2nd ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Workshop},
   year =         {2002},
   month =        {November},
   address =      {Boston, MA}
}