Revisiting Internet AS-Level Topology Discovery

The development of veracious models of the Internet topology has received a lot of attention in the last few years. Many proposed models are based on topologies derived from RouteViews [1] BGP table dumps (BTDs). However, BTDs do not capture all AS–links of the Internet topology and most importantly the number of the hidden AS–links is unknown, resulting in AS–graphs of questionable quality. As a first step to address this problem, we introduce a new AS–topology discovery methodology that results in more complete and accurate graphs. Moreover, we use data available from existing measurement facilities, circumventing the burden of additional measurement infrastructure. We deploy our methodology and construct an AS–topology that has at least 61.5% more AS–links than BTD–derived AS–topologies we examined. Finally, we analyze the temporal and topological properties of the augmented graph and pinpoint the differences from BTD–derived AS–topologies.