Distributed Network for Reverse-Tracerouting

I got the head's up from some folks concerning Traceloop.com. It's an interesting idea - you can see what route your traffic takes on the /return/ path. By utilizing a large group of distributed test points anyone registered with the service can run traceroutes in both directions provided there is a client near the destination ISP. So, they are looking for more people to sign up for the network - but also to have people use it. I'd like to see this used vis a vis DoS attacks and such - but this approach is a whole new way of doing this.

Comments

Re:This gives me an idea

[Hemos]

We need more database RAM, actually. Then we need more webserver RAM - we're reaching our celing on max connections, and can't add more until we get more RAM.

Huh?

[Phizzy]

Alright, first, ICMP is a necessity. It is the Internet Control Messaging Protocol, and is used to troubleshoot network issues. It does _not_ use much bandwidth, and I seriously doubt it consumes 15-17%, though I do not have stats to back that up. Regardless, even if it does take that much bandwidth, or even 25%, it is a necessary part of the internet. I work at an ISP, doing routing configuration and troubleshooting most of the time, and without free reign to use ICMP however I want (which includes flood pings and extended pings), I could not do my job. This tool could be used to save a lot of time on the internet, actually.. here's a situation I see every day.. some customer has a problem reaching blah.com.. when he runs a traceroute, it goes all the way through my network, and then dies in another isp's network which I have no visibility to. I have to send email or call the other ISP and wait at their whim for them to address the problem, which happens slowly, if not at all most of the time. If Traceloop were inplemented across the board, a lot of time could be saved by Noc employees across the globe, which would mean quicker resolution of internet problems, which would lead to greater stability and speed on the network, which I am sure would help your precious business.

You business people need to realize that you don't own the internet. You pay for a very small amount of bandwidth on the internet, which you can do what you choose with, but you didn't build the internet, you don't maintain the internet and you have no right whatsoever to tell anyone else what to do with their bandwidth.

The only thing I can figure is you're either an idiot or a troll.. if the former is true, please go read Internet Architechtures by Halabi (cisco press book)... it is very useful. If the latter is the case, the fuck right off.

//Phizzy

Very useful for people in JANET

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK academic network charge institutions (2p/MB on average), some of which pass the cost on to individuals, for transatlantic traffic.
Having a way to do reverse traceroutes would be invaluable for identifing the offending traffic more effectively.
Currently we can look at traceroutes for evidence of the JANET US gateways, and the ping time (anything that does through the US gateways >70ms) all of which isn't ideal...

Tracing DOS?

[fanatic]

I'd like to see this used vis a vis DoS attacks and such

A serious DOS wil use spoofed source addresses, rendering this use useless.

What about looking glass?

[Floody]

While the distributed concept of this approaches something that might be called cool, there is already a remote tool installed at many NAPs which provides similar functionality in terms of reverse traceroutes and considerably more (BGP, etc). It's called looking glass, it's open source (perl) and doesn't carry around the broken subscriber model that this traceloop crap has.

Check out http://nitrous.digex.net for more info. An invaluable tool for routing engineers.

Re:This gives me an idea

[wowbagger]

Precisely my point: their DB server has 2G of RAM. Assume they've maxed it out: that's 4G since it's an Intel system.

Given the amount of crap the /. system must track, upgrading that to a dual or 4-way Alpha with 10G of RAM would probably help a bunch.

Re:This could be dangerous

[SteveLightman]

The source for tltrace is freely available. The link hasn't been published on the site (yet), but it is tltrace-0.91b-1.src.tar.gz.
We will endeavour to make this clearer on the web site in the future. Go ahead and grab it if you like.