CI-ADDO-EN: ILENS: Internet Laboratory for Empirical Network Science

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

Understanding the structure and dynamics of Internet topology, routing, workload, performance, and vulnerabilities remains disturbingly elusive, in part for lack of large-scale distributed network measurement infrastructure available to scientific researchers. This project upgrades and extends -- in geographic scope as well as function -- an active measurement instrumentation (Ark), creating an unprecedented laboratory in which to easily design, implement, and coordinate execution of Internet measurement experiments across a widely distributed set of dedicated monitors. In 2007 Ark launched a new global Internet topology measurement and mapping expedition, and now gathers the largest set of IP topology data available to academic researchers. We use the best available techniques for IP topology mapping, share raw and processed data sets, and support software for analysis, annotation, topology generation, and interactive visualization of resulting graphs. The effort has three tasks: (1) adding new monitors in geographic and topological areas lacking coverage; (2) improving tools for processing topology data; (3) enhancing and developing software modules to support new experiments and validation. Workshops will also be conducted to collect, synthesize, and integrate feedback on Ark operations. It is expected that a broad set of research communities will continue make use of this measurement infrastructure. By lowering the cost to implement scientific Internet measurement experiments, Ark will allow researchers to test and evaluate more ambitious, sophisticated and risky ideas. The resulting data will enable a wide range of network modeling, simulation, analysis, and theoretical research activities, including historical Internet studies and evaluation of proposed future Internet architectures.