How to get a list of research and academic ISP ?

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1

Dear all,

I am a PhD student at EPFL, Switzerland. My recent research interest is in
large scale differences between the commercial and academic parts of the
Internet.

Of course, in order to perform this kind of studies I need a way to
distinguish between these two worlds. I've learnt that Abilene does not
provide commercial connectivity. This means that BGP prefixes and AS paths
announced by Abilene BGP routers should lead only to research and academic
destinations. I have extracted (from the BGP tables at
http://abilene.internet2.edu/observatory) a list of all such destinations
and obtained 1333 ASes (for data form July 2006). The number looks
reasonable, but I would like to be sure that I am not making a mistake.
Therefore I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions:

1) Is this approach to obtain a list of research and academic ISPs
correct?

2) Do you maybe know of such lists compiled before?

3) If I keep not only the destination ASes, but also all ASes on the
AS paths towards these destination I obtain a list of about 1400 ASes. How
should I understand this? Does it mean that some research and academic
destinations are reachable from Abilene only by traversing the commercial
Internet?

4) Of course, research and academic ASes are often well connected to
the commercial Internet. My guess is that in most cases their peering
relationship is "customer-provider", where commercial ASes are providers. Is
it possible that an academic AS is a provider for some commercial ASes? If
so, does it happen often?

Thank you in advance for your comments.

Maciej Kurant

2

Dear all,

I am a PhD student at EPFL, Switzerland. My recent research interest is in large scale differences between the commercial and academic parts of the Internet.

Of course, in order to perform this kind of studies I need a way to distinguish between these two worlds. I’ve learnt that Abilene does not provide commercial connectivity. This means that BGP prefixes and AS paths announced by Abilene BGP routers should lead only to research and academic destinations. I have extracted (from the BGP tables at http://abilene.internet2.edu/observatory) a list of all such destinations and obtained 1333 ASes (for data form July 2006). The number looks reasonable, but I would like to be sure that I am not making a mistake. Therefore I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions:

1) Is this approach to obtain a list of research and academic ISPs correct?

It's a way. The trouble is that

- most I2 As's also have "I1" connections and run BGP on that as well.
- Any corporate member of I2 has the right to announce their routes into I2

What I would do is to take the list and look at the names (on a list such as

http://www.multicasttech.com/status/asn_expand.txt

From the name of the institution, you should be able to tell in most cases.

2) Do you maybe know of such lists compiled before?

3) If I keep not only the destination ASes, but also all ASes on the AS paths towards these destination I obtain a list of about 1400 ASes. How should I understand this? Does it mean that some research and academic destinations are reachable from Abilene only by traversing the commercial Internet?

There are certainly some academic aggregation SP's - NYSERNET and CANARIE and RENATER (google on those) come to mind.

4) Of course, research and academic ASes are often well connected to the commercial Internet. My guess is that in most cases their peering relationship is “customer-provider”, where commercial ASes are providers. Is it possible that an academic AS is a provider for some commercial ASes? If so, does it happen often?

It may happen, but probably not often.

Thank you in advance for your comments.

Maciej Kurant

Hope this helps.

Regards
Marshall Eubanks

3

There are certainly some academic aggregation SP's - NYSERNET and
CANARIE and RENATER (google on those) come to mind.

Some more lists.

Europe:
http://www.geant.net/server.php?show=conWebDoc.393

Mediterranean:
http://www.eumedconnect.net/server/show/nav.509

Latin America:
http://alice.dante.net/server/show/nav.1098

Rob

4

Dear all,

I am a PhD student at EPFL, Switzerland. My recent research interest is in
large scale differences between the commercial and academic parts of the
Internet.

Of course, in order to perform this kind of studies I need a way to
distinguish between these two worlds. I've learnt that Abilene does not
provide commercial connectivity. This means that BGP prefixes and AS paths
announced by Abilene BGP routers should lead only to research and academic
destinations.

  that might be a flawed assumption.

I have extracted (from the BGP tables at
http://abilene.internet2.edu/observatory) a list of all such destinations
and obtained 1333 ASes (for data form July 2006). The number looks
reasonable, but I would like to be sure that I am not making a mistake.
Therefore I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions:

1) Is this approach to obtain a list of research and academic ISPs
correct?
2) Do you maybe know of such lists compiled before?

  yes, check the NLANR/CAIDA data and the old MERIT/ISI datasets
  for NSFnet-era policy splits.

3) If I keep not only the destination ASes, but also all ASes on the
AS paths towards these destination I obtain a list of about 1400 ASes. How
should I understand this? Does it mean that some research and academic
destinations are reachable from Abilene only by traversing the commercial
Internet?

4) Of course, research and academic ASes are often well connected to
the commercial Internet. My guess is that in most cases their peering
relationship is "customer-provider", where commercial ASes are providers. Is
it possible that an academic AS is a provider for some commercial ASes? If
so, does it happen often?

  some universities have "startup" entites that are spun up under the
  perview of the university. imho, its not common, but does happen.

5

Maciej,

I work at one of the research institutions connected to Abilene and have some
understanding of how various institutions handle their I2 connections.

Of course, in order to perform this kind of studies I need a way to
distinguish between these two worlds. I�ve learnt that Abilene
does not provide commercial connectivity. This means that BGP prefixes
and AS paths announced by Abilene BGP routers should lead only to research
and academic destinations.

I think someone already pointed this out, but I'll just underscore the fact
that _MOST_ of the AS'es connected to Abilene are research and academic
institutions. However, there are a lot of others connected for various
reasons. For example, Akamai and Microsoft, government facilities, a few
non-profits, and some companies that provide support and equipment for the
Abilene project.

I have extracted (from the BGP tables at
http://abilene.internet2.edu/observatory) a list of all such destinations
and obtained 1333 ASes (for data form July 2006). The number looks
reasonable, but I would like to be sure that I am not making a mistake.
Therefore I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions:

I know that we provide a BGP feed over to Renesys which includes our I2
routing tables, so they may also be able to help you understand how Abilene
and the commodity Internet map together.

1) Is this approach to obtain a list of research and academic
ISPs correct?

See my above comments, but I would suggest that pretty much all research and
academic locations are connected to Abilene, but the converse isn't true:
everything connected to Abilene is not a research/academic entity.

2) Do you maybe know of such lists compiled before?
3) If I keep not only the destination ASes, but also all ASes on
the AS paths towards these destination I obtain a list of about 1400 ASes.
How should I understand this? Does it mean that some research and academic
destinations are reachable from Abilene only by traversing the commercial
Internet?

Abilene is a very flat hierarchy from the AS perspective. Institutions
tend to either connect directly to it or into aggregation/GigaPops which
themselves connect directly to Abilene. I'm guessing that you only added
90 ASes when you expanded your list to all AS'es along the Abilene path
because those are the few aggregation points and similar items. For example,
in the northeastern US, most of the institutions aggregate their traffic into
a consortium called the Northern Crossroads (AS 10571), which peers directly
with Abilene. Some of the members themselves are consortiums (e.g. OSHEAN
- http://www.oshean.org), so that adds in another AS. In both cases, the ASes
are used mostly to share links, bandwidth, and support costs and are not really
ISPs in the way that you are probably thinking about.

4) Of course, research and academic ASes are often well
connected to the commercial Internet. My guess is that in most cases
their peering relationship is �customer-provider�, where
commercial ASes are providers. Is it possible that an academic AS
is a provider for some commercial ASes? If so, does it happen often?

I think that the short answer is yes, but I'm not really sure how prevelant
that is. I know that that NoX has peering relationships with a few local
ISPs and uses these to provide transit for consortium members. These are,
however, peering rather than transit relationships. With that said, some of
the NoX members are cosortiums themselves and have both Abilene and commodity
connections for their member institutions.

I hope this helps. If not or if you have some more questions, drop me a note.

Eric :slight_smile: