R.: A measurement study on the impact of routing events on end-to-end Internet path performance

Extensive measurement studies have shown that end-to-end Inter-net path performance degradation is correlated with routing dynam-ics. However, the root cause of the correlation between routing dynamics and such performance degradation is poorly understood. In particular, how do routing changes result in degraded end-to-end path performance in the first place? How do factors such as topological properties, routing policies, and iBGP configurations affect the extent to which such routing events can cause perfor-mance degradation? Answers to these questions are critical for im-proving network performance. In this paper, we conduct extensive measurement that involves both controlled routing updates through two tier-1 ISPs and active probes of a diverse set of end-to-end paths on the Internet. We find that routing changes contribute to end-to-end packet loss sig-nificantly. Specifically, we study failover events in which a link failure leads to a routing change and recovery events in which a link repair causes a routing change. In both cases, it is possible to experience data plane performance degradation in terms of in-creased long loss burst as well as forwarding loops. Furthermore, we find that common routing policies and iBGP configurations of ISPs can directly affect the end-to-end path performance during routing changes. Our work provides new insights into potential measures that network operators can undertake to enhance network performance