Tracing Data Packet Paths over the Internet using Traceroute

TL;DR

This study provides an extensive analysis of IP data packet routing over five years, revealing non-deterministic paths, significant route variability, and delay influences from provider and protocol changes.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive, trace-driven analysis of Internet packet routing dynamics across multiple providers, regions, and protocols, highlighting variability and delay factors.

Findings

Packet paths are non-deterministic and not always shortest.

Routes vary significantly even with provider or protocol changes.

Packet delays are affected by provider and IP version changes.

Abstract

Network communication using the Internet Protocol (IP) is a pillar of modern Internet applications. IP allows data packets to travel the world through a complex set of interconnected computer networks managed by different operators. How IP-based data communication changes over time can be interesting from an end-system's perspective without relying on underlying network providers. This article presents an extensive, trace-driven analysis of user data traffic (covering five years of observations, six large Internet service providers (covering research, business and consumer category type), twenty autonomous systems, and fourteen countries. Our three primary findings are: i users data packet transmission paths are not deterministic and does not always select the geographically shortest path; ii) user packets take different routes that cover many countries and detour between two fixed points. Even after changing the types of Internet service provider type (e.g., from commercial to research), the routing can differ significantly between two locations. iii) Packet transmission delay can be influenced by changing the Internet service provider and IP protocol versions (i.e., from IPv4 to IPv6).