A Fast Scheme for Simple Geographic Internet Mapping

We developed an IP mapping tool called VisRutas for discovering connection and geographic location of routers (hosts) in the public Internet. Unlike previous schemes that use large data bases and intensive route probe systems (as the Rocketfuel method) or less reliable IP-to-location mapping list (GeoTrack and GeoCluster methods), our approach is simple, fast and effective. It is based on small database tables, scalable traceroute and tracert based route information, BorderGateway protocol (BGP) tables and a reliable IP to location mapping list. VisRutas tool was applied to estimate the router-level topology (connection) map of the public Internet in Mexico, and the complete analysis took minutes to hours, whereas previous schemes take days to weeks. It is fair to mention that the other schemes provide better detail mapping inside the Internet service provider's domain, (which is not our main objective). Another advantage of our approach (VisRutas) is that it can be successfully applied anywhere in the world (as long as we input the correct end-nodes probing list), as well as to make early path diversity discovery to improve media delivery architecture design.