A BGP beacon is an unused BGP prefix (unused in the sense that no traffic
is ever forwarded to the prefix) that is intentionally announced and
withdrawn periodically at known times. Announcements and withdrawals
are usually spaced apart by two hours. Beacons are useful for studying
BGP convergence, and the concept is related to Craig Labovitz's
technique of injecting faults into the interdomain routing system
as a means of studying convergence.
Datasets:
RIPE RIS BGP Beacons: one /24 prefix at each of 9 RIS route collectors
BGP updates in Oct 2002 caused by beacons; observed at RIS (?)
Results:
statistics on number of triggered BGP updates per event per peer:
observe more messages for withdrawals than for announcements
most announcements cause fewer than 5 update messages
most withdrawals cause fewer than 10 update messages
statistics on latency of first BGP update per event per peer;
distributions are similar for announcements and withdrawals;
centered at 30 seconds
statistics on latency of last BGP update per event per peer:
latency is higher for withdrawals than for announcements
latency for most announcements is under 100 seconds
