Internet core topology mapping and analysis

The study of the Internet topology allows us to discover properties that can be exploited in order to improve the performance of network protocols and applications. Thus, Internet mapping is very useful to simulation software focusing on network protocols. Unfortunately Internet mapping has two major drawbacks. First it takes a lot of time to be carried out and secondly it is often incomplete. To solve these two problems, we have developed a mapping software whose aim is to map the heart of the Internet as fast as possible with the highest possible accuracy. In this paper, we describe our software and evaluate its performance compared to an existing and freely available mapping software. We assess the completeness of the router level maps by creating overlays with an autonomous system topology. We also study the scalability of the mapping techniques of our software by carrying out an extensive data collection. We show that some limitations concerning the amount of useful information do appear when we try to carry out an exhaustive mapping. Finally, we study the path inflation phenomenon caused by the routing protocols.