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Impact of multiple ISPs
Our analysis in Section 4 focused on the
characteristics of the end-to-end path from a source to a
destination. The end-to-end path typically traverses multiple
autonomous systems (ASes). Some of the ASes are stub networks such as
university or corporate networks (where the source and destination
nodes may be located) whereas others are ISP networks. The
relationships between these networks is often complex. There are
customer-provider relationships (such as those between a university
network and its ISP or between a regional ISP and a nationwide ISP)
and peering relationships (such as those between two nationwide
ISPs). A stub network may be multi-homed (i.e., be connected to
multiple providers). Two nationwide ISPs may peer with each other at
multiple locations (e.g., San Francisco and New York).
These complex interconnections between the individual networks have an
impact on end-to-end routing. In this section, we show that geography
can indeed be used as a means to analyze these complex
interconnections. Specifically, we investigate the following
questions: (a) are Internet paths within individual ISP networks as
circuitous as end-to-end paths?, (b) what impact does the presence of
multiple ISPs have on the circuitousness of the end-to-end path?, (c)
what is the distribution of the path length within individual ISP
networks, and (d) can geography shed light on the issue of
hot-potato versus cold-potato routing?
Subsections
Next: Circuitousness of end-to-end paths
Up: Geographic Properties of Internet
Previous: Summary of Results
Lakshminarayanan Subramanian
2002-04-14