[dns-operations] Anycast Topology and Performance paper released

[Steve Gibbard]

After some delay, we've released the paper related to my talk at the July 
DNS Operations Workshop.

Abstract:

Observations on Anycast Topology and Performance

Steve Gibbard
Packet Clearing House

Much of the Internet's critical DNS infrastructure -- several of the root 
servers and many top-level domains -- are being distributed with a 
technique called anycast. There are significant variations in network 
topology between different anycast systems.

There have been several studies of stability and query distribution of 
anycast networks. Most have focused on a single anycast system and may 
have told us more about the specific system studied than about anycast in 
general. A recent study by Liu, Hufffaker, Fomenkov, Brownlee, and claffy 
applied a consistent methodology to three different anycast systems and 
found significant differences in query distribution among the three.

This paper is an examination of the Liu et al. study from a network 
engineering perspective. It considers how network topology affects 
performance and why their research showed the results it did. It then 
looks at what we can infer from those results about the behavior of other 
anycast systems, and examines the query data from another anycast system 
to test those inferences.

The paper is at http://www.pch.net/resources/papers/anycast-performance/

Thanks,
Steve