arXiv subjects

Robert Beverly

Publications and source records attributed to Robert Beverly.

23 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

An Internet Heartbeat

Obtaining sound inferences over remote networks via active or passive measurements is difficult. Active measurement campaigns face challenges of load, coverage, and visibility. Passive measurements require a privileged vantage point. Even networks under our own control too often remain poorly understood and hard to diagnose. As a step toward the democratization of Internet measurement, we consider the inferential power possible were the network to include a constant and predictable stream of dedicated lightweight measurement traffic. We posit an Internet "heartbeat," which nodes periodically send to random destinations, and show how aggregating heartbeats facilitates introspection into parts of the network that are today generally obtuse. We explore the design space of an Internet heartbeat, potential use cases, incentives, and paths to deployment.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2018

In the IP of the Beholder: Strategies for Active IPv6 Topology Discovery

Existing methods for active topology discovery within the IPv6 Internet largely mirror those of IPv4. In light of the large and sparsely populated address space, in conjunction with aggressive ICMPv6 rate limiting by routers, this work develops a different approach to Internet-wide IPv6 topology mapping. We adopt randomized probing techniques in order to distribute probing load, minimize the effects of rate limiting, and probe at higher rates. Second, we extensively analyze the efficiency and efficacy of various IPv6 hitlists and target generation methods when used for topology discovery, and synthesize new target lists based on our empirical results to provide both breadth (coverage across networks) and depth (to find potential subnetting). Employing our probing strategy, we discover more than 1.3M IPv6 router interface addresses from a single vantage point. Finally, we share our prober implementation, synthesized target lists, and discovered IPv6 topology results.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2018

Yarrp'ing the Internet: Randomized High-Speed Active Topology Discovery

Obtaining a "snapshot" of the Internet topology remains an elusive task. Existing active topology discovery techniques and systems require significant probing time -- time during which the underlying network may experience transient dynamics. This work considers how active probing can gather the Internet topology in minutes rather than days. Conventional approaches to active topology mapping face two primary speed and scale impediments: i) per-trace state maintenance; and ii) a low-degree of parallelism. Based on this observation, we develop Yarrp (Yelling at Random Routers Progressively), a new traceroute technique designed for high-rate, Internet-scale probing. Yarrp is stateless, reconstituting all necessary information from ICMP replies as they arrive asynchronously. To avoid overloading routers or links with probe traffic, Yarrp randomly permutes an input IP x TTL space. We run Yarrp at 100Kpps, a rate at which the paths to all /24's on the IPv4 Internet can be mapped in approximately one hour from a single vantage point. We compare Yarrp against existing systems, and present examples of topological dynamics exposed via the high sampling rates Yarrp enables.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2017

Principles for Measurability in Protocol Design

Measurement has become fundamental to the operation of networks and at-scale services---whether for management, security, diagnostics, optimization, or simply enhancing our collective understanding of the Internet as a complex system. Further, measurements are useful across points of view---from end hosts to enterprise networks and data centers to the wide area Internet. We observe that many measurements are decoupled from the protocols and applications they are designed to illuminate. Worse, current measurement practice often involves the exploitation of side-effects and unintended features of the network, or, in other words, the artful piling of hacks atop one another. This state of affairs is a direct result of the relative paucity of diagnostic and measurement capabilities built into today's network stack. Given our modern dependence on ubiquitous measurement, we propose measurability as an explicit low-level goal of current protocol design, and argue that measurements should be available to all network protocols throughout the stack. We seek to generalize the idea of measurement within protocols, e.g., the way in which TCP relies on measurement to drive its end-to-end behavior. Rhetorically, we pose the question: what if the stack had been built with measurability and diagnostic support in mind? We start from a set of principles for explicit measurability, and define primitives that, were they supported by the stack, would not only provide a solid foundation for protocol design going forward, but also reduce the cost and increase the accuracy of measuring the network.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2017

SDN as Active Measurement Infrastructure

Active measurements are integral to the operation and management of networks, and invaluable to supporting empirical network research. Unfortunately, it is often cost-prohibitive and logistically difficult to widely deploy measurement nodes, especially in the core. In this work, we consider the feasibility of tightly integrating measurement within the infrastructure by using Software Defined Networks (SDNs). We introduce "SDN as Active Measurement Infrastructure" (SAAMI) to enable measurements to originate from any location where SDN is deployed, removing the need for dedicated measurement nodes and increasing vantage point diversity. We implement ping and traceroute using SAAMI, as well as a proof-of-concept custom measurement protocol to demonstrate the power and ease of SAAMI's open framework. Via a large-scale measurement campaign using SDN switches as vantage points, we show that SAAMI is accurate, scalable, and extensible.

cs.NI↗