Techniques for Determining the Geographic Location of IP Addresses in ISP Topology Measurement

A brief survey on the state-of-the-art research of determining geographic location of IP addresses is presented. The problem of determining the geographic location of routers in Internet Service Provider (ISP) topology measurement is discussed when there is inadequate information such as domain names that could be used. Nine empirical inference rules are provided, and they are respectively (1) rule of mutual inference, (2) rule of locality, (3) rule of ping-pong assignment, (4) rule of bounding from both sides, (5) rule of preferential exit deny, (6) rule of unreachable/timeout, (7) rule of relay hop assignment, (8) rule of following majority, and (9) rule of validity checking based on interface-finding. In totally 2,563 discovered router interfaces of a national ISP topology, only 6.4% of them can be located by their corresponding domain names. In contrast, after exercising these nine empirical inference rules, 38% of them have been located. Two methods have mainly been employed to evaluate the effectiveness of these inference rules. One is to compare the measured topology graph with the graph published by the corresponding ISP. The other is to contact the administrator of the corresponding ISP for the verification of IP address locations of some key routers. The conformity between the locations inferred by the rules and those determined by domain names as well as those determined by whois information is also examined. Experimental results show that these empirical inference rules play an important role in determining the geographic location of routers in ISP topology measurement. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 60203021 and 60403033. Yu Jiang received the B.S. degree in computer software from the Heilongjiang University, Harbin, China, in 1990 and the M.S. degree in computer software and theory from the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), Harbin, China, in 1999. From August 1990 to August 1999, he worked on computer applications for the Statistics Bureau of Heilongjiang Provincial Government. At present, he is with the professional title of senior electronic engineer, and he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at the HIT. His current research interests are in the areas of Internet measurement and distributed network computing. Bin-Xing Fang received the B.S. degree in computer applications from the HIT, Harbin, China, in 1981 and the M.S. degree in computer architecture from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1984 and the Ph.D. degree in computer architecture from the HIT, Harbin, China, in 1989. He conducted post-doctoral research work at the National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China. He is a part time professor in the School of Computer Science and Technology at the HIT, Harbin, China, and the head of the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center, Beijing, China. His research interests are in the areas of computer network and information security, distributed network computing, and high performance computer architecture. Ming-Zeng Hu graduated from the HIT, Harbin, China, in 1958. He is a professor in the School of Computer Science and Technology at the HIT, Harbin, China. His research interests are in the areas of high performance computer architecture, computer information security, and parallel computing. Xiang Cui received the B.S. degree and the M.S. degree in computer architecture from the HIT, Harbin, China, in 2001 and in 2003, respectively. He works presently for the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/ Coordination Center, Beijing, China. His current research interests are in the areas of computer virus inspection and computer information security.