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

Data
. . . Sources
. . . Specification
. . . Aggregation
. . . Filters

Visualization
. . . Techniques
. . . Key Mappings
. . . Tools

Evaluation
. . . Strengths
. . . Issues

Credits/Contact Info
. . . Authors
. . . Contact Info

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Additional Content

Internet Atlas Gallery

GTrace - Geographical Traceroute

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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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GTrace - Geographical Traceroute

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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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GTrace - Geographical Traceroute

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Credits / Contact Info

Authors:

GTrace Java code by Ram Periakaruppan
Maps by VisualRoute
BerkeleyDB by Sleepycat Software
NetGeo by CAIDA
traceroute by Van Jacobsen

Contact Info:
For further information, send email to:
info @ caida.org

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GTrace - Geographical Traceroute

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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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