Operators have deployed Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) in the Internet for over a decade. However, its impact on Internet topology measurements is not well known, and it is possible for some MPLS configurations to lead to false router-level links in maps derived from traceroute data. In this paper, we introduce a measurement-based classification of MPLS tunnels, identifying tunnels where IP hops are revealed but not explicitly tagged as label switching routers, as well as tunnels that obscure the underlying path. Using a large-scale dataset we collected, we show that paths frequently cross MPLS tunnels in today's Internet: in our data, at least 30% of the paths we tested traverse an MPLS tunnel. We also propose and evaluate several methods to reveal MPLS tunnels that are not explicitly flagged as such: we discover that their fraction is significant (up to half the explicit tunnel quantity) but most of them do not obscure IP-level topology discovery.
Description
Revealing MPLS tunnels obscured from traceroute | acm sigcomm
%0 Journal Article
%1 donnet2012revealing
%A Donnet, Benoit
%A Luckie, Matthew
%A Mérindol, Pascal
%A Pansiot, Jean-Jacques
%D 2012
%I Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
%J ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
%K internet mpls network tcpip traceroute tunnel
%N 2
%P 87–93
%R 10.1145/2185376.2185388
%T Revealing MPLS tunnels obscured from traceroute
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2185376.2185388
%V 42
%X Operators have deployed Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) in the Internet for over a decade. However, its impact on Internet topology measurements is not well known, and it is possible for some MPLS configurations to lead to false router-level links in maps derived from traceroute data. In this paper, we introduce a measurement-based classification of MPLS tunnels, identifying tunnels where IP hops are revealed but not explicitly tagged as label switching routers, as well as tunnels that obscure the underlying path. Using a large-scale dataset we collected, we show that paths frequently cross MPLS tunnels in today's Internet: in our data, at least 30% of the paths we tested traverse an MPLS tunnel. We also propose and evaluate several methods to reveal MPLS tunnels that are not explicitly flagged as such: we discover that their fraction is significant (up to half the explicit tunnel quantity) but most of them do not obscure IP-level topology discovery.
@article{donnet2012revealing,
abstract = {Operators have deployed Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) in the Internet for over a decade. However, its impact on Internet topology measurements is not well known, and it is possible for some MPLS configurations to lead to false router-level links in maps derived from traceroute data. In this paper, we introduce a measurement-based classification of MPLS tunnels, identifying tunnels where IP hops are revealed but not explicitly tagged as label switching routers, as well as tunnels that obscure the underlying path. Using a large-scale dataset we collected, we show that paths frequently cross MPLS tunnels in today's Internet: in our data, at least 30% of the paths we tested traverse an MPLS tunnel. We also propose and evaluate several methods to reveal MPLS tunnels that are not explicitly flagged as such: we discover that their fraction is significant (up to half the explicit tunnel quantity) but most of them do not obscure IP-level topology discovery.},
added-at = {2023-12-22T12:11:38.000+0100},
author = {Donnet, Benoit and Luckie, Matthew and Mérindol, Pascal and Pansiot, Jean-Jacques},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2a7cd17953cf86f8a54eebdbd25c56b53/tabularii},
description = {Revealing MPLS tunnels obscured from traceroute | acm sigcomm},
doi = {10.1145/2185376.2185388},
interhash = {a8e9d3067581ca1a0554f3d08bd58341},
intrahash = {a7cd17953cf86f8a54eebdbd25c56b53},
issn = {0146-4833},
journal = {ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review},
keywords = {internet mpls network tcpip traceroute tunnel},
month = mar,
number = 2,
pages = {87–93},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)},
timestamp = {2023-12-22T12:12:09.000+0100},
title = {Revealing MPLS tunnels obscured from traceroute},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2185376.2185388},
volume = 42,
year = 2012
}