A measurement framework for pin-pointing routing changes

Renata Teixeira (1) , Jennifer Rexford (2)

1 UC San Diego - University of California [San Diego]
2 AT&T Labs Research

Changes in the end-to-end path between two hosts can lead to sud-den changes in the round-trip time and available bandwidth, or even the complete loss of connectivity. Determining the reason for the routing change is crucial for diagnosing and fixing the problem, and for holding a particular domain accountable for the disrup-tion. Active measurement tools like traceroute can infer the cur-rent path between two end-points, but not where and why the path changed. Analyzing BGP data from multiple vantage points seems like a promising way to infer the root cause of routing changes. In this paper, we explain the inherent limitations of using BGP data alone and argue for a distributed approach to troubleshooting rout-ing problems. We propose a solution where each AS continuously maintains a view of routing changes in its own network, without requiring additional support from the underlying routers. Then, we describe how to query the measurement servers along the AS-level forwarding path from the source to the destination to uncover the location and the reason for the routing change.

Mots clés: IGP; BGP; Network troubleshooting; root cause analysis

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Renata Teixeira, Jennifer Rexford. A measurement framework for pin-pointing routing changes. ACM SIGCOMM Network Troubleshooting Workshop, Aug 2004, Portland, United States. ⟨10.1145/1016687.1016704⟩. ⟨hal-01097540⟩