[Nets-seminars] First talk of term 4th February GS/302 16:00

[Richard G. Clegg]

The first speaker in our series of talks for this term is Olaf Mannael 
from Loughborough.  You can find the complete list of talks here:
http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/research/comminfosys/seminars/seminars

"10 Lessons from 10 Years of Measuring and Modeling the Internet's 
Autonomous Systems"

Formally, the Internet inter-domain routing system is a collection of 
networks, their policies, peering relationships and organizational 
affiliations, and the addresses they advertize. It also includes 
components like Internet exchange points. By its very definition, each 
and every aspect of this system is impacted by BGP, the de-facto 
standard inter-domain routing protocol.

The element of this inter-domain routing system that has attracted the 
single-most attention within the research community has been the 
"inter-domain topology". Unfortunately, almost from the get go, the vast 
majority of studies of this topology, from definition, to measurement, 
to modeling and analysis, have ignored the central role of BGP in this 
problem. The legacy is a set of specious findings, unsubstanciated 
claims, and ill-conceived ideas about the Internet as a whole.

This talk tries present a BGP-focused treatement of the aspects that are 
critical for a rigorous study of this inter-domain topology. We aim at 
de-mythifing many "controversial" observations reported in the existing 
literature. At the same time, we illustrate the benefits and richness of 
new scientific approaches to measuring, modeling, and analyzing the 
inter-domain topology that are faithful to the BGP-specific nature of 
this problem domain.

-- 
Richard G. Clegg,
Dept of Elec. Eng.,
University College London
http://www.richardclegg.org/