Introduction
Visual Traceroute is a new feature that can be accessed by calling reflector.cgi with function=vtrace. Currently it can provide visual traceroute from 29 landmarks (2 in USA and 1 per each of 27 countries). Some of these are listed below, for a complete list check the from dropdown:
- www-wanmon.slac.stanford.edu, SLAC National Accelerator Lab, near San Francisco, California, USA
- pinger.cern.ch, CERN, Geneva Switzerland
- maggie1.seecs.edu.pk, National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
- mel-a-ext1.aarnet.net.au, Australia's Academic and Research Network, Melbourne, Australia
- pinger.fsktm.um.edu.my, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
lblnet-test.lbl.gov(131.243.24.12), LBL, Berkeley, California, USA
It works by first finding the traceroute to the target using the traceroute.pl installed at the landmark node and then geolocating each of the intermediate hop routers using TULIP. It can be accessed from http://tulip.slac.stanford.edu or here.
We use TULIP's dynamic ping-based geolocation as compared to say database methods such as used by MaxMind derived tools like GeoIPTools, since often router locations in the database tend to be given as at the corporate HQ that owns the routers (e.g. ESnet routers may supposedly be located in Berkeley).
Performance
Normally it would take about 10 mins to perform a complete visual traceroute but we have incorporated caching to speed up the process. As the router locations are found they are automatically cached in /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/tulip/cachetr/cache.txt
If the location of all the routers in the requested vtrace are cached then it takes only about 10 secs to give the output.
Working Specifics
A subset of the Maxmind city database is used to find the nearest city to each router, only cities with population greater than 100,000 are considered.
- The database used is /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/tulip/citidb.txt
Both PingER and PerfSONAR landmarks can be used as the traceroute source
- List of possible PingER landmarks is /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/tulip/pinger_vtrace.txt
- List of possible PerfSONAR landmarks is /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/tulip/psonar_vtrace.txt
- or simply see http://www-wanmon.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/reflector.cgi?PE=set&PSE=set&function=landmarks
Visual Traceroute can be called directly from URL. The format is:
- http://www-wanmon.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/reflector.cgi?function=vtrace&from=Landmark_HostName&target=target_IP_or_HostName
- for Landmark_HostName see http://www-wanmon.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/reflector.cgi?function=landmarks in some cases the HostName is the same as IP
The From landmarks drop down list is populated from /nfs/slac/g/net/pinger/tulip/from.txt .This list if checked and updated daily from crontab using vtracefromchk.pl
Certain routers can not be geolocated because they respond to only a few pings or don't respond to them at all. A script vtrace0chk.pl tries to geolocate such routers in the cache and updates the cache accordingly each night.
Both vtracefromchk.pl and vtrace0chk.pl are placed in /afs/slac/package/pinger/tulip/
Design
The tabular traceroute is shown together with the Autonomous System Number (ASN), if known, the router's location coordinates and distance between hops. Clicking on the IP address will take you to the TULIP geolocation utility. Clicking on the ASN will provide information on the ASN.
Two traceroute paths are shown on the google map. One (shown in red) is drawn using TULIP and the other (shown in blue) is drawn using MaxMind (an IP host location database). The hops are shown as appropriate numbered markers, the error in the estimated location is shown as a red circle. See the figure below:
This figure shows the traceroute from SLAC to NUST Pakistan. http://www-wanmon.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/reflector.cgi?function=vtrace&target=nust.edu.pk
Comparisons between MaxMind and TULIP
This presentation was sent to Harvey.
| University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur to NUST Islamabad | NUST Islamabad to University of Malaya | CERN to NUST | Melbourne to NUST | Melbourne to CERN | Melbourne to SLAC | CERN to UCSD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| SLAC to CERN | SLAC to ICTP Trieste | SLAC to NUST | SLAC to UCSD | SLAC to Melbourne | SLAC to Waikato New Zealand | SLAC to U Oregon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Strasbourg to UM | LBL (Berkeley CA) to UM | SLAC to Cape Town | Algiers to SLAC | Bolivia to BNL New York | Valparaiso Chile to SLAC | Mumbai to NUST, Islamabad |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Beijing to NUST | Bangladesh to SLAC | Bangladesh to CERN | Bangladesh to Rio de Janeiro | Burkina Faso to NUST | Burkina Faso to SLAC | Burkina Faso to KEK Tokyo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Taiwan to NUST | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 | |||
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Other Visual Traceroutes
- CQ Traceoute, one server in St Paul, Minnesota, gives country, lat/long and distance of router from server, shows map as static image
- DNSTools, one server in Frankfurt, no lat/long, provides map
- WhatismyIPaddress, only takes IP addresses, tabular output identifying city, map shows end point only
- Montis, has 3 servers, in US (Pacific Northwest), Europe (Ireland) and Asia/Pacific (Singapore), provides map, no lat/longs or cities
- Visualware, can choose server region and a limited number of target regions, requires Java, does not support traceroutes
- VisualRoute, buy application, identifies city, no lat/longs. no map
- Free Visual, download free application, don't see a map
- GTrace, download free application, has map
- VTrace multiple servers, gives lat/long plus error, provides map,city, country code
Of these Montis appears to be the most reasonable to compare with.
| Montis Server in Singapore to UM Kuala Lumpur | ||
|---|---|---|
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