iTraceroute: Traceroute with Concurrency and IP-to-AS Resolution Zheng Zhang, DSNL, Purdue

What is iTraceroute

iTraceroute is a new implementation of traceroute. It is designed for probing a lot of destinations simultaneously. iTraceroute has the following features.

• Concurrency: iTraceroute can probe multiple destinations simutaneously and efficiently.
• Resolving IP into AS (Autonomous System): iTraceroute can resolve the IPs of the traced hops into AS (Autonomous System) numbers.
• Versatile stopping rules: iTraceroute provides various options to make traceroute stop when specified conditions are triggered. These options will help you if you just want to probe part of a path and want to minimize the probing overhead.

Download

• iTraceroute
  • itraceroute 0.1, released in Feb, 2009.
• IP-to-AS mapping
  • PrefixToAS.map, generated on 2008/12/21.

Example Use

• Example 1: Traceroute to google.com and display the ASes of the hops along the way. The command is,

  ./iTraceroute -M PrefixToAS.map -c 1 google.com
  

  . The output is,

  128.46.101.46:56482->74.125.45.100:33000 tcp_ack !R finish_time= 1234379973
  0 128.46.101.1 [0.559 ms] {17}
  1 172.19.124.1 [0.402 ms] {0}
  2 192.31.0.10 [0.379 ms] {0}
  3 192.31.0.14 [0.414 ms] {0}
  4 172.28.250.9 [0.402 ms] {0}
  5 192.5.40.179 [1.557 ms] {0}
  6 * [ ] { }
  7 149.165.254.23 [30.533 ms] {19782}
  8 64.57.28.7 [34.464 ms] {11537}
  9 64.57.28.10 [38.246 ms] {11537}
  10 64.57.29.21 [53.037 ms] {11537}
  11 216.239.49.217 [35.589 ms] {15169}
  12 66.249.94.235 [40.372 ms] {15169}
  13 66.249.95.127 [40.254 ms] {15169}
  14 72.14.238.136 [55.68 ms] {15169}
  15 209.85.254.241 [55.819 ms] {15169}
  16 209.85.253.133 [56.074 ms] {15169}
  17 74.125.45.100 [56.261 ms] {15169} !R
  

  . Let me explain the meaning of the output. In the first line, 128.46.101.46:56482->74.125.45.100:33000 shows you the source and destination IP and port. tcp_ack means we send tcp packet to probe. Next, !R indicates the reason why traceroute stops -- the destination is reached and TCP RST (R represents RST) packet is received. Finally finish_time= 1234379973 records the finish time of the execution in unix time format. Subsequent lines show the hops traced along the path. For example, in line 8 64.57.28.7 [34.464 ms] {11537}, 64.57.28.7 is the hop IP, 34.464 ms is the RTT, and 11537 is the AS number.

• Example 2: Traceroute to multiple destination simultaneously. The command is,

  ./iTraceroute -p 3 -F list.txt
  

  . Option -p 3 specifies that the number of concurrent threads is 3. The destinations are given by the file list.txt whose content is for example,

  120.50.224.1
  120.72.0.1
  202.180.192.1
  61.114.64.16
  61.114.64.4
  

  . The output is here.

• Example 3: Make traceroute stop after entering a specified AS, say 15169. The command is,

  ./iTraceroute -M PrefixToAS.map -c 1 -A 15169 google.com
  

  . The output is,

  128.46.101.46:52274->209.85.171.100:33000 tcp_ack enter-AS finish_time= 1234553055
  0 128.46.101.1 [0.246 ms] {17}
  1 172.19.124.1 [0.325 ms] {0}
  2 172.28.252.21 [0.36 ms] {0}
  3 172.28.252.2 [0.395 ms] {0}
  4 172.28.250.9 [0.367 ms] {0}
  5 192.5.40.179 [1.502 ms] {0}
  6 * [ ] { }
  7 149.165.254.23 [227.342 ms] {19782}
  8 64.57.28.7 [40.112 ms] {11537}
  9 64.57.28.10 [37.071 ms] {11537}
  10 64.57.29.21 [35.667 ms] {11537}
  11 209.85.255.68 [35.599 ms] {15169}
  

FAQ

• Why not use execute multiple traditional traceroute processes to achieve concurrency?

  Because multi-processing consumes more resources than multi-threading. 100 traceroute processes raise CPU usage to around 50% on my machine. High system resource usage is a problem if you perform measurement on PlanetLab.

• How does iTraceroute resolve IP into AS?

  iTraceroute uses BGP routing tables to resolve IP into AS. The owner AS of an IP address is the origin AS of the smallest covering IP prefix in the routing tables. The BGP routing tables are collected from Route Views.