TCP-based traceroute: An evaluation of different probing methods

Abstract

Traceroute is the most commonly used tool, not only for network diagnostics, but also for discovering the topology of the Internet. We evaluated the discovery capability of three variations of TCP-based traceroute: the first uses SYN segments as probes, the other two operate on an existing connection and use DATA and ACK segments as probes. Experimental results show that using different types of probes is useful to obtain a richer view of the Internet, both in terms of IP interfaces and autonomous systems.