Geographic Properties of Internet Routing

In this paper, the authors study the geographic properties of Internet routing. The work is distinguished from most previous studies of Internet routing in that they consider the geographic path traversed by packets, not just the network path. They examine several geographic properties including the circuitousness of Internet routes, how multiple ISPs along an end-to-end path share the burden of routing packets, and the geographic fault tolerance of ISP networks. They evaluate these properties using extensive network measurements gathered from a geographically diverse set of probe points. The analysis shows that circuitousness of Internet paths depends on the geographic and network locations of the end-hosts, and tends to be greater when paths traverse multiple ISP.