CS 294-105: Homework #2 - Due 5PM Mon Sep 15

1. Read the paper Strategies for Sound Internet Measurement. While the paper is written in terms of Internet measurement in particular, nearly all of the principles it frames also apply to more general empirical analysis undertakings. Some of Section 5 will not necessarily be relevant for you, but you may find its discussion of meta-data and longitudinal measurement useful.
   1. If there were networking-related parts that you found hampered your understanding of the points being made, please sketch them.

   2. How long did it take you to read the paper?

   3. Do you have any questions or comments about the paper?

2. If needed, (re)familiarize yourself with the workings of traceroute, a tool very widely used to measure the routes that individual messages ("packets") take through the Internet.
   If you have questions about its operation (which may come up later as you work on part C), feel free to post them to Piazza.

   If you haven't used traceroute before, you might find it useful to play with it. It should be available on any Unix system.

3. Download the routing measurements dataset. Note that it expands to about 28K files totaling 110 MB.

   This dataset consists of traceroute measurements repeatedly conducted between a set of Internet hosts. The point of the measurements was to obtain a representative view on the behavior of Internet routing, with one key question (though not the only one) being to what degree are routes stable, i.e., the route stays unchanged for a lengthy period of time.

   The measurement methodology included pairing the measurements: that is, when conducting a measurement from A to B, at the same time also conduct one from B to A.

   Note, this is actual data from a large-scale measurement study, presented in its entirety (other than I left out a number of additional measurements that used somewhat differing methodologies).

   A typical measurement looks something like:

   traceroute to frog.rhic.bnl.gov (130.199.90.96), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
   
    1  199.94.220.1  2.209 ms  1.927 ms  1.872 ms
    2  192.52.71.11  5.002 ms  2.333 ms  2.342 ms
    3  192.233.149.202  3.468 ms  4.128 ms  3.038 ms
    4  192.233.95.2  3.622 ms  4.832 ms  3.865 ms
    5  134.55.9.1  13.528 ms  13.458 ms  13.654 ms
    6  192.12.15.1  15.681 ms  17.251 ms  14.912 ms
    7  130.199.137.224  13.926 ms  14.453 ms  16.609 ms
    8  130.199.90.96  15.518 ms  14.52 ms  14.101 ms 

   That is, a first line describing the measurement being conducted, a blank line, and then a list of each of the hops in the measured route, with an Internet ("IP") address like 199.94.220.1 followed by 3 time measurements corresponding to the time it took to receive back the 3 probes sent to that hop. Each numbered hop represents one step closer along the route towards the destination (which appears in the final hop) and away from the source. (Note that the first hop is not the source but a "router" to which the source has a direct connection.)
   1. Summarize the most basic properties of the dataset. (I'm again leaving this vague so you can reflect on what you think constitutes those basic properties.) Your answer here should be fairly brief.

   2. In what ways do some of the measurements differ from the "typical" measurement mentioned above? For each qualitatively different way:
      1. Describe how to detect or otherwise recognize the differing measurements.

      2. Quantify how often they appear in the dataset, or explain why doing so would take quite a bit of work.

      3. Do you believe the difference represents an actual phenomenon pertaining to the route being measured, or instead a measurement artifact? Explain why.

   3. For the previous question, briefly sketch your approach to finding such different measurements. Does it leave you confident that you likely found (nearly) all of the different ways that the measurements manifest as something other than the "typical" pattern?

   4. Optional and Hard: if you're interested in working with the data further, investigate what conclusions you can draw from the measurements regarding the stability of Internet routes. Do they indeed remain unchanged for significant periods of time? Be sure to clearly describe your methodology for conducting the analysis.

   5. How much time did you spend on this assignment?

   6. What additional data or meta-data did you find you wished this dataset had included (if any)?

   7. (Optional:) Any comments on the assignment? Was it illuminating/frustrating/fun/boring? What would improve it?