Mapping Networks and Services Proc
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Mapping Networks and Services Proc. INET ´93 J.S. Quarterman Mapping Networks and Services John S. Quarterman1 Smoot Carl-Mitchell2 Gretchen Phillips3 Abstract I . Introduction Four global networks carry most of the Computer networking is widespread, supported by international network traffic; FidoNet, UUCP, the global Matrix of interconnected computer BITNET, and the Internet. The first step in networks such as the Internet, BITNET, UUCP, looking at these networks involves collecting and FidoNet. Perhaps 20,000,000 people use this appropriate data for each and performing some global Matrix of computer networks, and several consistency checking. The data for these maps major global computer networks are growing was initially derived from their node lists exponentially, rapidly reaching new countries and (BITNET and FidoNet) or host lists (UUCP). The new classes of users. This growth prompts Internet data came from a domain walk by Mark network users and service providers to ask Lottor. questions like: The data available from the node lists, public d Where are these users? maps and the domain walk is not in a format that d What is the magnitude of the various network is readily usable for this type of mapping. Each communities? map or other source of network information tends d What are the available services? to include different details. We have correlated the d How are services distributed? data by using telephone country codes, area codes d And, finally, how can this data be represented and local exchanges for determining locations. A in a meaningful graphical way? more complete discussion of the methods is We have chosen Latin America and the Caribbean available in issues of Matrix News[5-7] (ALyC) as the geographic region for discussing these issues and demonstrating the mapping of II . Classification currently available data. These are not traditional Classification of location by telephone shaded geographic outlines nor node and link country codes has been straightforward for most connectivity maps, but rather, maps that show ALyC countries; for example, Brazil is telephone locations and numbers of networked hosts and country code 55 and Mexico is 52; Costa Rica is services. This representation of the network gives 506 and Uruguay is 598. When the International a presentation of where the networks go, rather Telecommunications Union (ITU) assigned these than how they get there, and shows what areas are numbers, it made them all start with 5, using two reachable by each network type. We do not show digits for each populous country and three for exactly where the users are, but we show where smaller countries. There have been no recent the hosts they use are. These maps can give political border changes to account for, unlike in network administrators and users alike a better Europe. Telephone country code 53, for Cuba [ 3], understanding of the areas connected to the global tends to be missing from many lists. Matrix, and the services available in each area. 33333333333333333333333333333333 The Caribbean is interesting, since almost 1 John Quarterman is Senior Technical Partner in Texas two dozen countries use telephone exchanges in Internet Consulting. He can be reached at area code 1-809, under the country code 1, that [email protected] also covers Canada, the United States, and Guam. 2 Smoot Carl-Mitchell is Managing Partner in Texas These countries may be hard to see in the maps as Internet Consulting. He can be reached at reproduced in black and white for the proceedings [email protected] (the maps look better in color). Here is a list of 3 Gretchen Phillips is the Manager of the UNIX Support what to look for: Puerto Rico (Internet, UUCP, Group at the University at Buffalo. She can be FidoNet, BITNET), U.S. Virgin Islands (FidoNet, reached at [email protected] Internet, UUCP), Jamaica (UUCP), Dominican Republic (UUCP), Guadeloupe (UUCP and EARN), Grenada (UUCP), and Trinidad and CDA-1 Mapping Networks and Services Proc. INET ´93 J.S. Quarterman Tobago (UUCP). don’t know for sure. Even with these uncertainties, a simple list of domains with some IIA22222222222222222222222 . Internet Domain Walk geographical annotations has permitted us to place As mentioned, the Internet data mostly came 92 percent of the Mexican hosts from Lottor’s from Mark Lottor’s SRI NISC domain walk [2, 5]. domain walk with reasonable certainty, and all but The Internet uses the TCP/IP (and other) protocols about 1 percent of the rest with plausibility. to provide fast, sophisticated services, including Of course, since domain walks show what not only electronic mail, mailing lists, and hosts have IP (Internet Protocol) addresses USENET news (group discussions), but also advertised by DNS, not which hosts are actually remote login (TELNET, rlogin, the X Window reachable, we also do not know which hosts in System, and others) and file transfer (FTP, rcp, Lottor’s domain walk are really on the Internet, NFS, AFS, and others). We will discuss some of nor do we know how many hosts on the Internet these and some other Internet services later in this are not in the domain walk. We do not know the paper. The Internet is the hardest of these four corresponding information for the other networks networks to localize, because of the distribution of either, because being listed in the UUCP map or host naming authority with the Domain Name the BITEARN or FidoNet nodelist is no guarantee System (DNS). Unlike the other networks, there is that a host is reachable. The only way to be sure no central node list for the Internet; instead, each is to actually try to reach each host on each organization controls its own name space, and may network with an appropriate protocol. We delegate part of it to suborganizations. Each considered that beyond the scope of our paper, country has a top level domain, such as BR for Brazil and MX for Mexico; CR for Costa Rica and IIB22222222222222222 . FidoNet Hosts UY for Uruguay. Second level domain registries, Since the Fidonet nodelist is the definition of for domains like itesm.mx, are kept per country. FidoNet, the primarily MS-DOS dial-up network This requires inquiries to approximately 30 country that uses the Fido protocols to deliver mail and registries for complete localization of ALyC alone, echomail (group discussion topics), we used only not to mention the rest of the world. In addition, that list in determining the location and many organizations, particularly large universities, magnitudes of the FidoNet hosts [7]. have third level subdomains in various locations, such as mty.itesm.mx, and these will usually not IIC222222222222222 . UUCP Hosts even be in the country registries. This distribution of DNS authority is good for the Internet, but not UUCP, the mostly UNIX mostly dialup so good for mapping. This problem is evident in network, uses the UUCP (UNIX to UNIX CoPy) the maps shown here. The Internet in Brazil only protocol to supply electronic mail (and often also appears in S˜ao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. We USENET news) to even the most remote parts of don’t know if there are Internet nodes elsewhere in the world. Most of the UUCP data came from the Brazil. UUCP maps, that are posted to USENET newsgroup comp.mail.maps, and are available by Mexico is an interesting case of how much anonymous FTP and UUCP from many hosts. The mapping can be done with a little information. UUCP data was augmented from several sources. The Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) has numerous campuses The folks at ORSTOM in Montpellier, across the country. Fortunately, they keep a list France were kind to send the node list for the RIO available by anonymous FTP of their own main network (you can get it by anonymous FTP from subdomains, plus those of many other orstom.orstom.fr), which uses mostly UUCP and organizations. That list does not contain place sometimes X.25 and TCP/IP to connect interesting names for all the domains it lists, but many of the parts of the world. Most RIO nodes are in Africa, domain abbreviations are clear, and some can be the Indian Ocean, or the South Pacific. However, found in the BITEARN node list or the UUCP RIO also connects Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, map. We have been a bit speculative in places. Is and French Guiana in South America. These are mor.itesm.mx Morelia, Michoaca´n or Cuernavaca, both politically departments of France, and their Morelos? We have guessed the latter. We would main language is French, not Spanish or think qro.itesm.mx is for Quintana Roo, so the Portuguese. Nonetheless, they are physically actual hosts are probably in Chetumal, but we located in the southern part of the western hemisphere (RIO lists them as being in the CDA-2 Mapping Networks and Services Proc. INET ´93 J.S. Quarterman Antilles), so we map them. 1,000 Internet hosts, and some sites have only one host. Both large and small sites need to be visible IID22222222222222222 . BITNET Hosts across three or more orders of magnitude. For BITNET we used only the BITEARN The various networks must be visible nodelist. We are using BITNET as the name of separately on the composite map, so we used both the worldwide collection of interconnected NJE color coding and different shapes to make the (Network Job Entry) networks. In ALyC, there are networks visually distinct. As we began building actually many such networks, including the composite map, it was confirmed that networks SCARNET in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and like UUCP and FidoNet provide connectivity to Uruguay, ANSP in Brazil, RUNCOL in Colombia, remote locations, while the Internet brings services and ECUANET in Ecuador [6].