Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - BGP-Multipath Routing in the Internet
AU - Li, Jie
AU - Giotsas, Vasileios
AU - Wang, Yangyang
AU - Zhou, Shi
PY - 2022/9/1
Y1 - 2022/9/1
N2 - BGP-Multipath (BGP-M) is a multipath routing technique for load balancing. Distinct from other techniques deployed at a router inside an Autonomous System (AS), BGP-M is deployed at a border router that has installed multiple inter-domain border links to a neighbor AS. It uses the equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) function of a border router to share traffic to a destination prefix on different border links. Despite recent research interests in multipath routing, there is little study on BGP-M. Here we provide the first measurement and a comprehensive analysis of BGP-M routing in the Internet. We extracted information on BGP-M from query data collected from Looking Glass (LG) servers. We revealed that BGP-M has already been extensively deployed and used in the Internet. A particular example is Hurricane Electric (AS6939), a Tier-1 network operator, which has implemented >1,000 cases of BGP-M at 69 of its border routers to prefixes in 611 of its neighbor ASes, including many hyper-giant ASes and large content providers, on both IPv4 and IPv6 Internet. We examined the distribution and operation of BGP-M. We also ran traceroute using RIPE Atlas to infer the routing paths, the schemes of traffic allocation, and the delay on border links. This study provided the state-of-the-art knowledge on BGP-M with novel insights into the unique features and the distinct advantages of BGP-M as an effective and readily available technique for load balancing.
AB - BGP-Multipath (BGP-M) is a multipath routing technique for load balancing. Distinct from other techniques deployed at a router inside an Autonomous System (AS), BGP-M is deployed at a border router that has installed multiple inter-domain border links to a neighbor AS. It uses the equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) function of a border router to share traffic to a destination prefix on different border links. Despite recent research interests in multipath routing, there is little study on BGP-M. Here we provide the first measurement and a comprehensive analysis of BGP-M routing in the Internet. We extracted information on BGP-M from query data collected from Looking Glass (LG) servers. We revealed that BGP-M has already been extensively deployed and used in the Internet. A particular example is Hurricane Electric (AS6939), a Tier-1 network operator, which has implemented >1,000 cases of BGP-M at 69 of its border routers to prefixes in 611 of its neighbor ASes, including many hyper-giant ASes and large content providers, on both IPv4 and IPv6 Internet. We examined the distribution and operation of BGP-M. We also ran traceroute using RIPE Atlas to infer the routing paths, the schemes of traffic allocation, and the delay on border links. This study provided the state-of-the-art knowledge on BGP-M with novel insights into the unique features and the distinct advantages of BGP-M as an effective and readily available technique for load balancing.
KW - Electrical and Electronic Engineering
KW - Computer Networks and Communications
U2 - 10.1109/tnsm.2022.3177471
DO - 10.1109/tnsm.2022.3177471
M3 - Journal article
VL - 19
SP - 2812
EP - 2826
JO - IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
JF - IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
SN - 1932-4537
IS - 3
M1 - 3
ER -