Towards a traffic map of the Internet Connecting the dots between popular services and users
Connecting the dots between popular services and users
Thomas Koch (Columbia University)
Weifan Jiang (Columbia University)
Tao Luo (Columbia University)
Petros Gigis (RIPE NCC, University College London)
Yunfan Zhang (Columbia University)
Kevin Vermeulen (Columbia University)
Emile Aben (Microsoft)
Matt Calder (Columbia University, RIPE NCC)
Ethan Katz-Bassett (Columbia University)
Lefteris Manassakis (FORTH-ICS)
Georgios Smaragdakis (TU Delft - Cyber Security)
Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez (IMDEA Networks / ICSI)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
The impact of Internet phenomena depends on how they impact users, but researchers lack visibility into how to translate Internet events into their impact. Distressingly, the research community seems to have lost hope of obtaining this information without relying on privileged viewpoints. We argue for optimism thanks to new network measurement methods and changes in Internet structure which make it possible to construct an "Internet traffic map". This map would identify the locations of users and major services, the paths between them, and the relative activity levels routed along these paths. We sketch our vision for the map, detail new measurement ideas for map construction, and identify key challenges that the research community should tackle. The realization of an Internet traffic map will be an Internet-scale research effort with Internet-scale impacts that reach far beyond the research community, and so we hope our fellow researchers are excited to join us in addressing this challenge.
help_outline