
NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
Recipient: |
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Initial Amendment Date: | August 20, 2013 |
Latest Amendment Date: | August 4, 2015 |
Award Number: | 1320977 |
Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
Program Manager: |
Darleen Fisher
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
Start Date: | October 1, 2013 |
End Date: | September 30, 2017 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $499,994.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $531,994.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2014 = $16,000.00 FY 2015 = $16,000.00 |
History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1776 E 13TH AVE EUGENE OR US 97403-1905 (541)346-5131 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
OR US 97403-1202 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): |
Special Projects - CNS, Networking Technology and Syst |
Primary Program Source: |
01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Understanding where and how the more than 40,000 actively routed Autonomous Systems (ASes) in today's Internet interconnect is essential for meaningfully investigating a wide range of critical Internet-related problems such as the vulnerability of the Internet to physical damage. However, much of the published work on Internet topology has focused primarily on discovering the existence of such interconnections (e.g., logical connectivity such as AS-to-AS links or physical connectivity such as router-to-router links). Considerably less attention has been paid to the where and in how many different locations these interconnections have been established. For example, the often-studied AS-level view of the Internet is too coarse as mapping entire ASes to single geographic locations eliminates essential details (e.g. AS-level path diversity). At the same time, the popular router-level view of the Internet is not only too detailed, but also inherently difficult to capture.
Intellectual Merit: The main goal of this project is to design, develop and rigorously evaluate techniques to accurately map the geographic location of all the PoPs (Point-of-Presence) of a given target AS and determine the inter-AS connections that are established at each PoP (point of presence) of this AS. A significant fraction of the Internet's physical infrastructure (e.g. routers, switches) is hosted at a relatively small number of physical building complexes, called colocation (or colo) facilities or data centers that can be accurately geo-located. Thus, a core element of this project is the design of new targeted active measurement campaigns specifically developed to map a given colo facility by identifying not only all the PoPs of all the ASes present in that colo facility, but also the corresponding inter-AS connectivity that is visible to active probing at that location.
Broader Impact: The inferred PoP-level maps are leveraged to develop a new and improved simulation environment, called cBGP+, that is built on the existing simulator (cBGP) but supports real-world AS path diversity. This new simulator will enable many Internet stakeholders (e.g. ISPs, DHS) to meaningfully assess, evaluate, and predict the inter-AS reachability of the Internet in the presence of certain events or changes (e.g., political unrests or the results of natural or man-made disasters).
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Internet interconnections are the means by which networks exchange traffic between one another. These interconnections are typically established in facilities that have known geographic locations, and are owned and operated by so-called colocation and interconnection services providers (e.g., Equinix, CoreSite, and EdgeConneX). These previously under-studied colocation facilities and the critical role they play in solving the notoriously difficult problem of obtaining a comprehensive view of the structure and evolution of the interconnections in today's Internet were the focus of this project.
The main outcome of the project was the design, development and evaluation of mi2, a new approach for systematically mapping (both inferring and pinning) all private and public Internet Interconnections inside a given colocation facility. mi2 relies on the information derived from carefully designed traceroute-based measurement campaigns to infer the likely interconnections at a colcation facilityand leverages the Belief Propagation algorithm that has been shown to be an effective way for solving inference problems arising in diverse areas such as statistical physics, computer vision, and Artificial Intelligence. In particular, mi2 uses the Belief Propagation algorithm on a specially defined Markov Random Field graphical model to pin (geolocate) each end of inferred interconnections to the inside or outside of a target facility. mi2 was evaluated by applying it to a diverse set of US-based colocation facilities. The results were also compared against those obtained by two recently developed related techniques. The comparisons illustrate observed discrepancies that result from how the different techniques determine the ownership of (border) routers.
As an important by-product, the project also revealed drastic changes in today's Internet interconnection ecosystem (e.g., new infrastructures in the form of cloud exchanges that offer new peering options in the form of virtual private interconnections to new customers in the form of enterprise networks without an AS number). These observed changes have far-reaching implications for future efforts aimed at obtaining an accurate and comprehensive map of the Internet's interconnections.
Last Modified: 04/20/2018
Modified by: Reza Rejaie
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