Vela: On-Demand Topology Measurement Service

Vela is the on-demand topology measurement service of CAIDA's Archipelago (Ark) infrastructure.

Introduction

Vela provides an easy way for researchers to conduct on-demand topology measurements on Ark. Users can conduct ping and traceroute measurements in IPv4 and IPv6 using ICMP, UDP, or TCP from any Ark monitor.

Vela supports a web-based interface. The web interface is useful for interactively performing ad-hoc exploratory measurements.

FANTAIL

In response to research community feedback, we are developing the FANTAIL system (Facilitating Advances in Network Topology Analysis) to enable discovery of the full potential value of massive raw Internet end-to-end path measurement data sets. We provide accounts to researchers and students for access to the prototype via the Vela web interface.

Web Interface

See the gallery of Vela screenshots for examples of Vela’s capabilities.

Access to the Vela web interface will be limited to academic researchers. While Vela is under development, we are not offering accounts to access Vela.

Henya users: anyone who previously has a Henya account already has a FANTAIL account, as FANTAIL is now powering Henya behind the scenes.

About the Name Vela

Vela (pronounced VEE-luh) is Latin for the sails of a ship. It is also a constellation representing the sails of the ship Argo Navis, the ship used by Jason and the Argonauts in Greek mythology. We like the idea of the Vela service being the “sails” used by researchers to travel on the Ark infrastructure.

Questions about Vela?

Please send questions or comments regarding Vela to ark-info@caida.org.

See https://catalog.caida.org/search?query=vela to explore related objects to this document in the CAIDA Resource Catalog.

Additional Content

Vela MIDAR API

This page documents a new web API service for conducting MIDAR alias resolution runs.

CAIDA Vela Topology Measurement Service: On-Demand Command-Line Interface (tod)

This page documents our command-line interface for conducting Vela traceroute/ping measurements on CAIDA’s Archipelago (Ark) infrastructure. For applications requiring access for conducting bulk measurements not supported by the Vela web interface we recommend researchers use the web API.

Vela Web API

This page documents our experimental web API for conducting Vela traceroute/ping measurements on the Ark infrastructure. Vela is the on-demand topology measurement service of CAIDA’s Archipelago (Ark) infrastructure.