An Internet Distance Prediction Service based on Passive Measurements

Distance estimation services support the adaptivity of distributed applications on the Internet by predicting the network characteristics between end systems. A common problem of such services is their need for large-scale deployment in order to operate properly. We propose a peer-to-peer-based distance measurement and prediction service that is able to predict distances from a single site to arbitrary end systems on the Internet while only requiring deployment at this specific site. In this paper we present the service architecture, and we demonstrate the viability of the approach with results from a prototype deployment of the service.