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.

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.