Efficient IP-Level Network Topology Capture

Large-scale distributed traceroute-based measurement systems are used to obtain the topology of the internet at the IP-level and can be used to monitor and understand the behavior of the network. However, existing approaches to measuring the public IPv4 network space often require several days to obtain a full graph, which is too slow to capture much of the network’s dynamics. This paper presents a new network topology capture algorithm, NTC, which aims to better capture network dynamics through accelerated probing, reducing the probing load while maintaining good coverage. There are two novel aspects to our approach: it focuses on obtaining the network graph rather than a full set of individual traces, and it uses past probing results in a new, adaptive, way to guide future probing. We study the performance of our algorithm on real traces and demonstrate outstanding improved performance compared to existing work.