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GTrace: Internet Atlas Gallery

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GTrace: Internet Atlas Gallery

GTrace - Geographical Traceroute

Ram Periakarrupen
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
URL: https://www.caida.org/catalog/software/gtrace/

GTrace is a graphical front end to traceroute that uses a number of heuristics to determine the location of each node along a network path.

Visualization Thumbnail Analysis
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Additional Content

Internet Atlas Gallery

GTrace - Geographical Traceroute

Ram Periakarrupen
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
URL: https://www.caida.org/catalog/software/gtrace/
Visualization Thumbnail Evaluation
Strengths:
(Strength1): Useful for identifying network topology and gaining macroscopic insight into Internet infrastructure.
(Strength2): Useful for discovering potentially inefficient routing.
Issues:
(Issue1): Can be slow.
(Issue2): Accuracy would be much improved if the Internet community maintained DNS LOC records, or a better NetGeo database was available.
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Internet Atlas Gallery

GTrace - Geographical Traceroute

Ram Periakarrupen
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
URL: https://www.caida.org/catalog/software/gtrace/
Visualization Thumbnail About the Visualization
Visualization Techniques:
(Technique1): Plot lat/long points; draw straight lines between hops.
Key Visualization Mappings:
(Mapping1): Line color shows confidence in location mapping.
  • Green line = high confidence in both endpoints
  • Yellow line = high confidence in one endpoint; moderate confidence in other
  • Blue line = moderate confidence in both endpoints
  • Red line = geographic center of the country where the IP address is believed to be located, or the location obtained from the whois record of the associated domain name
(Mapping2): Colored ball indicates the data source used for the lat/long mapping
  • Green = DNS LOC record
  • Yellow = Match found in GTrace DBs or user DBs
  • Blue = Domain parsing file
  • Cyan = Hostname reduction match
  • Red = WHOIS record of the best-match domain name for IP address
  • Gray = Country code
(Mapping3): Color of RTT value shows how many packets were lost:
  • Black = none
  • Blue = lost one pkt
  • Red = lost 2 or 3 pkts
Visualization Tools:
(Tool1) traceroute by Van Jacobsen
(Tool2) GTrace java code by Ram Periakaruppen (CAIDA).
(Tool3) NetGeo utilities by CAIDA
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Internet Atlas Gallery

GTrace - Geographical Traceroute

Ram Periakarrupen
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
URL: https://www.caida.org/catalog/software/gtrace/
Visualization Thumbnail Credits / Contact Info
Authors:
Contact Info:
For further information, send email to:
info @ caida.org
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Internet Atlas Gallery

GTrace - Geographical Traceroute

Ram Periakarrupen
Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)
University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
URL: https://www.caida.org/catalog/software/gtrace/
Visualization Thumbnail Data
Data Sources:
(Source1): traceroute to destination returns paths along route, recording:
  • Hop number
  • IP address
  • RTT (msec)
(Source2): GTrace databases: Machine.db, Organization.db, Hosts.db, Cities.db, Airport.db, additional dbs if added by user. (Source3): NetGeo database
Data Specification:
(Data1): RFC1876 DNS LOC
(Data2): RFC1918 IP Addresses
(Data3): RFC954 NICNAME / WHOIS records
(Data4): RFC1393 Traceroute Using IP
Data Aggregation:
Map IP address to hostname and lat/long using:
  • Host DNS LOC record
  • DBs from GTrace config file (5 bundled with GTrace + those added by user)
  • Domain parsing file
  • Hostname reduction match
  • NetGeo whois info
  • State or country code
Data Filters:
None.
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