Hi All!
Has anybody a link to a cost-free service for visualizations of internet exchange inter-connections?
Thanks & cheers
Tom
Hi Tom,
There’s a couple of different ways of interpreting your question, which will impact the answers you get.
You might mean “exchange inter-connections” as “how are the different internet exchanges connected to each other?”
in which case the answer is generally “through the Internet”. ^_^;
You might instead be thinking of “how are different participants in a single internet exchange cross-connected to
each other?” – in which case the answer is “through in-building wiring that often even the building owner isn’t
entirely aware of what path the connections are taking.” ^_^;
You might also be asking about BGP relationships, not physical connections, in which case mining route-views,
RIPE, and other BGP data sources, along with PeeringDB will allow you to see a percentage of the picture, though
not the entire model.
You might also be asking about “visualization” in the sense of “looking at traffic volumes across interconnections”,
at which point you’re whistling in the dark; other than the aggregate traffic volume visualization that some exchanges
provide, nobody is sharing their traffic graphs externally, sorry.
So, the first step to getting a meaningful answer is to clarify your question a bit more.
Are you asking about interconnections between internet exchanges, or interconnections within a single exchange?
Are you looking for physical layer interconnection information, or logical (BGP neighbor) interconnection information?
Are you just looking for a binary “does an interconnection relationship exist”, or are you looking to visualize traffic volumes across that relationship?
If you can provide a bit more clarity in what you’re looking for, we’ll have a better idea of how exactly to tell you you’re out of luck. ^_^;
Thanks!
Matt
You might instead be thinking of "how are different participants in a
single internet exchange cross-connected to each other?" -- in which
case the answer is "through in-building wiring that often even the
building owner isn't entirely aware of what path the connections are
taking." ^_^;
actually, i am amazed by the extent of "remote peering." if one
measures rtt to all the peers on the six, for example, the curve goes
out to well over 200ms. the six has seen remote peers from the gulf
states, and i do not mean louisiana.
graph below is one way to visualize ix connectivity, the op's question.
randy
actually, i am amazed by the extent of "remote peering." if one
measures rtt to all the peers on the six, for example, the curve goes
out to well over 200ms. the six has seen remote peers from the gulf
states, and i do not mean louisiana.graph below is one way to visualize ix connectivity, the op's
question.
i guess the list does not like graphs. decline of net predicted; news
at eleven. if you care, unicast.
randy
Hi Matt,
You might mean “exchange inter-connections” as “how are the different internet exchanges connected to each other?”
in which case the answer is generally “through the Internet”. ^_^;
I meant ix internet exchange path visualization and an online tool to take a look at it in (near) real time!
Cheers
I meant ix internet exchange path visualization and an online tool to take a look at it in (near) real time!
I’m still not sure I follow your question.
Are you asking ‘How does IX-FOO connect to IX-BAR?’ Or are you asking ‘What ASNs connect to IX-FOO AND IX-BAR?’
At $priorjob we had a latency requirement, must be I think it was ~2ms away.
The number of IX that are effectively a global transit backbone is quite odd.
I would be interested in seeing the graphic, if you can unicast or post URL.
- Jared
Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 08:06:11AM +0200, Thomas Beer:
Hi Matt,
> You might mean "exchange inter-connections" as "how are the different
> internet exchanges connected to each other?"
> in which case the answer is generally "through the Internet". ^_^;
>I meant ix internet exchange path visualization and an online tool to take
a look at it in (near) real time!
ISTR caida has some IX visualisation tools?
Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 08:06:11AM +0200, Thomas Beer:
I meant ix internet exchange path visualization and an online tool to take
a look at it in (near) real time!
We currently do not have any near real time path visualizations. If you are happy with AS level you could consider ThousandEyes or RIPE’s BGPlay. You would need to get a list of IXP ASes.
ISTR caida has some IX visualisation tools?
If you remove ’t’ from your filters you will double the number of matches.
Bradley
Ideally I think you need to go right back and study BGP. Looking glasses etc will show you everything you need to know combined with the other tools if you study.
Cheers
Yep seen this. Awful bollo&ks.
Ah, thank you for the enlightening clarification.
No such tool exists, sorry.
Thanks!
Matt
I hear the cybergeography project is making a comeback.
Hi All!
to make an (intermediate) summary so far, it’s 2023 and there are no tools available
for BGP, ASN and IX interconnection visualization static or dynamic?!
Nobody has a top-level understanding / awareness of the infrastructure topology and fixes
“bottlenecks”, route misconfiguration et al. on a peer - to - peer basis?!
Cheers
Tom
to make an (intermediate) summary so far, it's 2023 and there are no tools available
for BGP, ASN and IX interconnection visualization static or dynamic?!
No, that is not at all correct. People have tools that solve their actual needs. Do you have an actual need, or are you just blathering about how you’re smarter than the people who do it for a living?
Nobody has a top-level understanding / awareness of the infrastructure topology and fixes
"bottlenecks", route misconfiguration et al. on a peer - to - peer basis?!
Can you illuminate for us what precisely you’re trying to figure out? Right now it just looks like you’re mashing words you found together. And you’re doing it in public, on a mailing list with tens of thousands of people on it. People who are self-aware enough not to do that, and thus might consider it a breach of etiquette for you to do so.
-Bill
facepalm
You asked for a cost-free, publicly visible and available tool.
The lack of such does not mean tools don’t exist. It just means you won’t find them available for free to the general public.
Asking if X exists and being told ‘no’ does not say anything about whether Y exists or not.
People who need to know have tools.
Those tools are generally not free, however.
Matt
I don’t think any of us really understand what you’re hoping to find. I sure don’t. I think that this might be a result of a disconnect between your understanding of how these should be monitored and how they are monitored.
Specifically, of your two statements below, one is true and one is false. Just because there are no free “visualization” tools available doesn’t mean that there isn’t an understanding of the infrastructure.
I struggle to see how a visualization tool would help with a big picture view. The scale of interconnection is so staggering that any visualization would of necessity be incomplete so mere mortals could process it with our visual sensors. Unless what you mean by visualization is different than what I envision, the resulting visualization wouldn’t be all that useful to network operations.
As a result, every network operator that I’m aware of relies on various monitoring tools to alert them based on metrics previously set by humans. I.E. circuit congestion and peer status and so on. There are advanced tools which do sort through various data sets or traffic to try to alert humans to things which seem out of place. But these are not generally visualization tools, but instead essentially report and alert generators. Some times the reports or tools show pretty graphs but I’m not sure I’d classify that as visualization.
On the other hand, I wonder if I’m perhaps missing what your end goal is here. If you could be more verbose about the types of data you hope to get out of the tool, then perhaps someone could reply with how that’s monitored today.
I've always been a little less harsh than What Jared mentions, but my theory is like within say 5-7 ms is probably reasonable as long as the endpoint is closer than the next major IX both are present on. I don't really know what folks think they are getting by peering across the world. I think this might be one of those vanity peering type situations instead of any real technical justification. I have a hard time understanding how it would not often make routing worse.
John