A GLIMPSE of the Internet's Fabric

Abstract

Network measurements are essential for network operations and troubleshooting. A number of network measurement projects have developed measurement platforms to not only assess the state of individual networks and services but target certain aspects of the Internet as a whole. Measuring any aspect of the Internet is challenging for various reasons such as the sheer scale of the Internet or the dynamics of it. Building and operating a platform that has Internet-wide network measurements as a goal is therefore challenging. In this paper, GLIMPSE-an end user-based network measurement platform-is introduced and its architecture is described in detail. GLIMPSE is an attempt to build a measurement platform based on standard measurement techniques, external logic to trigger measurements and last but not least community support.