Topology Discovery Using Path Interference

Abstract: We consider the problem of inferring the topology of a network using the measurements available at the end nodes, without cooperation from the internal nodes. To this end, we provide a simple method to obtain path interference which identifies whether two paths in the network intersect with each other. Using this information, we formulate the topology inference problem as an integer program and develop polynomial time algorithms to solve it optimally for networks with tree and ring topologies. Finally, we use the insight developed from these algorithms to develop a heuristic for identifying general topologies. Simulation results show that our heuristic outperforms a recently proposed algorithm that uses distance measurements for topology discovery.