Large-scale mapping project
Images of some of the first attempts at a large scale map of the internet were produced by the Internet Mapping Project and appeared in Wired magazine. The maps produced by this project were based on the layer 3 or IP level connectivity of the Internet (see OSI model), but there are different aspects of internet structure that have also been mapped.
More recent efforts to map the internet have been improved by more sophisticated methods, allowing them to make faster and more sensible maps. An example of such an effort is the OPTE project, which is attempting to develop a system capable of mapping the internet in a single day.
The "Map of the Internet Project" maps over 4 billion internet locations as cubes in 3D cyberspace. Users can add URLs as cubes and re-arrange objects on the map.
In early 2011 Canadian based ISP PEER 1 Hosting created their own Map of the Internet that depicts a graph of 19,869 autonomous system nodes connected by 44,344 connections. The sizing and layout of the autonomous systems was calculated based on their eigenvector centrality, which is a measure of how central to the network each autonomous system is.
Graph theory can be used to better understand maps of the internet and to help choose between the many ways to visualize internet maps. Some projects have attempted to incorporate geographical data into their internet maps (for example, to draw locations of routers and nodes on a map of the world), but others are only concerned with representing the more abstract structures of the internet, such as the allocation, structure, and purpose of IP space.
Enterprise network mapping
Many organizations create network maps of their network system. These maps can be made manually using simple tools such as Microsoft Visio, or the mapping process can be simplified by using tools that integrate auto network discovery with Network mapping, one such example being the Fabric platform. Many of the vendors from the Notable network mappers list enable you to customize the maps and include your own labels, add un-discoverable items and background images. Sophisticated mapping is used to help visualize the network and understand relationships between end devices and the transport layers that provide service. Mostly, network scanners detect the network with all its components and deliver a list which is used for creating charts and maps using network mapping software. [1] Items such as bottlenecks and root cause analysis can be easier to spot using these tools.
There are three main techniques used for network mapping: SNMP based approaches, active probing and route analytics.
The SNMP based approach retrieves data from Router and Switch MIBs in order to build the network map. The active probing approach relies on a series of traceroute-like probe packets in order to build the network map. The route analytics approach relies on information from the routing protocols to build the network map. Each of the three approaches have advantages and disadvantages in the methods that they use.
Internet mapping techniques
There are two prominent techniques used today to create Internet maps. The first works on the data plane of the Internet and is called active probing. It is used to infer Internet topology based on router adjacencies. The second works on the control plane and infers autonomous system connectivity based on BGP data. A BGP speaker sends 19-byte keep-alive messages every 60 seconds to maintain the connection.
Active probing
This technique relies on traceroute-like probing on the IP address space. These probes report back IP forwarding paths to the destination address. By combining these paths one can infer router level topology for a given POP. Active probing is advantageous in that the paths returned by probes constitute the actual forwarding path that data takes through networks. It is also more likely to find peering links between ISPs. However, active probing requires massive amounts of probes to map the entire Internet. It is more likely to infer false topologies due to load balancing routers and routers with multiple IP address aliases. Decreased global support for enhanced probing mechanisms such as source-route probing, ICMP Echo Broadcasting, and IP Address Resolution techniques leaves this type of probing in the realm of network diagnosis.
AS PATH inference
This technique relies on various BGP collectors who collect routing updates and tables and provide this information publicly. Each BGP entry contains a Path Vector attribute called the AS Path. This path represents an autonomous system forwarding path from a given origin for a given set of prefixes. These paths can be used to infer AS-level connectivity and in turn be used to build AS topology graphs. However, these paths do not necessarily reflect how data is actually forwarded and adjacencies between AS nodes only represent a policy relationship between them. A single AS link can in reality be several router links. It is also much harder to infer peerings between two AS nodes as these peering relationships are only propagated to an ISP's customer networks. Nevertheless, support for this type of mapping is increasing as more and more ISP's offer to peer with public route collectors such as Route-Views and RIPE. New toolsets are emerging such as Cyclops and NetViews that take advantage of a new experimental BGP collector BGPMon. NetViews can not only build topology maps in seconds but visualize topology changes moments after occurring at the actual router. Hence, routing dynamics can be visualized in real time. In comparison to what the tools using BGPMon does there is another tool netTransformer able to discover and generate BGP peering maps either through SNMP polling or by converting MRT dumps [2] to a graphml file format. netTransformer allows us also to perform network diffs between any two dumps and thus to reason how does the BGP peering has evolved through the years. [3] WhatsUp Gold, an IT monitoring tool, tracks networks, servers, applications, storage devices, virtual devices and incorporates infrastructure management, application performance management. [4]
Internet BGP peering map (red - multi homed AS, green stubs)
A router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks. Routers perform the traffic directing functions between networks and on the global Internet. Data sent through a network, such as a web page or email, is in the form of data packets. A packet is typically forwarded from one router to another router through the networks that constitute an internetwork until it reaches its destination node.
Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN), and computer networks, such as the Internet.
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. BGP is classified as a path-vector routing protocol, and it makes routing decisions based on paths, network policies, or rule-sets configured by a network administrator.
Intermediate System to Intermediate System is a routing protocol designed to move information efficiently within a computer network, a group of physically connected computers or similar devices. It accomplishes this by determining the best route for data through a packet switching network.
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a routing protocol for Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It uses a link state routing (LSR) algorithm and falls into the group of interior gateway protocols (IGPs), operating within a single autonomous system (AS).
In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the "down-stream" users of each network. Peering is settlement-free, also known as "bill-and-keep" or "sender keeps all", meaning that neither party pays the other in association with the exchange of traffic; instead, each derives and retains revenue from its own customers.
In computer networking, a routing table, or routing information base (RIB), is a data table stored in a router or a network host that lists the routes to particular network destinations, and in some cases, metrics (distances) associated with those routes. The routing table contains information about the topology of the network immediately around it.
An autonomous system (AS) is a collection of connected Internet Protocol (IP) routing prefixes under the control of one or more network operators on behalf of a single administrative entity or domain, that presents a common and clearly defined routing policy to the Internet. Each AS is assigned an autonomous system number (ASN), for use in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing. Autonomous System Numbers are assigned to Local Internet Registries (LIRs) and end-user organizations by their respective Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), which in turn receive blocks of ASNs for reassignment from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The IANA also maintains a registry of ASNs which are reserved for private use.
An overlay network is a computer network that is layered on top of another network. The concept of overlay networking is distinct from the traditional model of OSI layered networks, and almost always assumes that the underlay network is an IP network of some kind.
anoNet is a decentralized friend-to-friend network built using VPNs and software BGP routers. anoNet works by making it difficult to learn the identities of others on the network allowing them to anonymously host IPv4 and IPv6 services. One of the primary goals of anoNet is to protect its participants' rights of speech and expression.
BGP hijacking is the illegitimate takeover of groups of IP addresses by corrupting Internet routing tables maintained using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
The Toronto Internet Exchange Community (TorIX) is a not-for-profit Internet Exchange Point (IXP) located in a carrier hotel at 151 Front Street West, Equinix's TR2 data centre at 45 Parliament Street and 905 King Street West in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As of March 2021, TorIX has 259 unique autonomous systems representing 285 peer connections and peak traffic rates of 1.344 Tbps, making it the largest IXP in Canada. According to Wikipedia's List of Internet Exchange Points by Size, TorIX is the 16th largest IXP in the world in numbers of peers, and 17th in the world in traffic averages. The Exchange is organized and run by industry professionals in voluntary capacity.
In Internet routing, the default-free zone (DFZ) is the collection of all Internet autonomous systems (AS) that do not require a default route to route a packet to any destination. Conceptually, DFZ routers have a "complete" Border Gateway Protocol table, sometimes referred to as the Internet routing table, global routing table or global BGP table. However, internet routing changes rapidly and the widespread use of route filtering ensures that no router has a complete view of all routes. Any routing table created would look different from the perspective of different routers, even if a stable view could be achieved.
Network tomography is the study of a network's internal characteristics using information derived from end point data. The word tomography is used to link the field, in concept, to other processes that infer the internal characteristics of an object from external observation, as is done in MRI or PET scanning. The field is a recent development in electrical engineering and computer science, dating from 1996. Network tomography seeks to map the path data takes through the Internet by examining information from “edge nodes,” the computers in which the data are originated and from which they are requested.
The Internet Mapping Project was started by William Cheswick and Hal Burch at Bell Labs in 1997. It has collected and preserved traceroute-style paths to some hundreds of thousands of networks almost daily since 1998. The project included visualization of the Internet data, and the Internet maps were widely disseminated.
Avaya Unified Communications Management in Computer Networking is the name of a collection of GUI software programs from Avaya. It uses a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that serves as a foundation forunifying the configuration and monitoring of Avaya Unified Communications Servers and data systems.
IP routing is the application of routing methodologies to IP networks. This involves not only protocols and technologies but includes the policies of the worldwide organization and configuration of Internet infrastructure. In each IP network node, IP routing involves the determination of a suitable path for a network packet from a source to its destination in an IP network. The process uses static configuration rules or dynamically obtained from routing protocols to select specific packet forwarding methods to direct traffic to the next available intermediate network node one hop closer to the desired final destination, a total path potentially spanning multiple computer networks.
Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI), also known as Resource Certification, is a specialized public key infrastructure (PKI) framework to support improved security for the Internet's BGP routing infrastructure.
A number of tools exist to generate computer network diagrams. Broadly, there are four types of tools that help create network maps and diagrams:
SCION is a modern Future Internet architecture that aims to offer high availability and efficient point-to-point packet delivery, even in the presence of actively malicious network operators and devices. As of 2018 it is an ongoing research project led by researchers at ETH Zurich and, among other Future Internet proposals, is being explored in the Internet Engineering Task Force research group for path-aware networking.
