"Topology Discovery in Heterogeneous IP Networks"
Abstract
Knowledge of the up-to-date physical topology of an IP network is crucial
to a number of critical network management tasks, including reactive and
proactive resource management, event correlation, and root-cause analysis.
Given the dynamic nature of today's IP networks, keeping track of topology
information manually is a daunting (if not impossible) task. Thus,
effective algorithms for automatically discovering physical network
topology are necessary. Earlier work has typically concentrated on either
(a) discovering logical (i.e., layer-3) topology, which implies that the
connectivity of all layer-2 elements (e.g., switches and bridges) is
ignored, or (b) proprietary solutions targeting specific product families.
In this paper, we present novel algorithms for discovering physical
topology in heterogeneous (i.e., multi-vendor) IP networks. Our algorithms
rely on standard SNMP MIB information that is widely supported by modern IP
network elements and require no modifications to the operating system
software running on elements or hosts. We have implemented the algorithms
presented in this paper in the context of a topology discovery tool that has
been tested on Lucent's own research network.
The experimental results clearly validate our approach, demonstrating that
our tool can consistently discover the accurate physical network topology
in time that is roughly quadratic in the number of network elements.
[
camera-ready paper
(pdf)
(ps.gz)
|
journal version
(pdf)
(in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking)
|
Rajeev's talk slides
(ppt.gz)
]
Copyright © 2000, IEEE.
Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to
reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for
creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists,
or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be
obtained from the IEEE.