Multilevel MDA-Lite Paris Traceroute

TL;DR

This paper introduces MDA-Lite, a more efficient multipath detection algorithm for Paris Traceroute, along with a simulator and multilevel route tracing, providing new insights into Internet load balancing topologies.

Contribution

It presents MDA-Lite to reduce overhead, a simulator for validation, multilevel route tracing for router-level views, and comprehensive surveys of Internet multipath routing.

Findings

MDA-Lite significantly reduces packet overhead.

Load balancing topologies have grown larger since 2016.

The new tools enable detailed router-level multipath analysis.

Abstract

Since its introduction in 2006-2007, Paris Traceroute and its Multipath Detection Algorithm (MDA) have been used to conduct well over a billion IP level multipath route traces from platforms such as M-Lab. Unfortunately, the MDA requires a large number of packets in order to trace an entire topology of load balanced paths between a source and a destination, which makes it undesirable for platforms that otherwise deploy Paris Traceroute, such as RIPE Atlas. In this paper we present a major update to the Paris Traceroute tool. Our contributions are: (1) MDA-Lite, an alternative to the MDA that significantly cuts overhead while maintaining a low failure probability; (2) Fakeroute, a simulator that enables validation of a multipath route tracing tool's adherence to its claimed failure probability bounds; (3) multilevel multipath route tracing, with, for the first time, a Traceroute tool that provides a router-level view of multipath routes; and (4) surveys at both the IP and router levels of multipath routing in the Internet, showing, among other things, that load balancing topologies have increased in size well beyond what has been previously reported as recently as 2016. The data and the software underlying these results are publicly available.