Experimental study of Internet stability and backbone failures

In this paper, we describe an experimental study of Internet topological stability and the origins of failure in Internet protocol backbones. The stability of end-to-end Internet paths is dependent both on the underlying telecommunication switching system, as well as the higher level software and hardware components specific to the Internet's packet-switched forwarding and routing architecture. Although a number of earlier studies have examined failures in the public telecommunication system, little attention has been given to the characterization of Internet stability. We provide analysis of the stability of major paths between Internet Service Providers based on the experimental instrumentation of key portions of the Internet infrastructure. We describe unexpectedly high levels of path fluctuation and an aggregate low mean time between failures for individual Internet paths. We also provide a case study of the network failures observed in a large regional Internet backbone. We characterize the type, origin, frequency and duration of these failures.