Re: How to get a list of research and academic ISP ?

[bmanning () karoshi com]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 06:46:06PM +0100, Maciej Kurant wrote:
> Dear all,
>
>  
>
> I am a PhD student at EPFL, Switzerland. My recent research interest is in
> large scale differences between the commercial and academic parts of the
> Internet. 
>
>  
>
> Of course, in order to perform this kind of studies I need a way to
> distinguish between these two worlds. I've learnt that Abilene does not
> provide commercial connectivity. This means that BGP prefixes and AS paths
> announced by Abilene BGP routers should lead only to research and academic
> destinations. 

        that might be a flawed assumption. 

> I have extracted (from the BGP tables at
> http://abilene.internet2.edu/observatory) a list of all such destinations
> and obtained 1333 ASes (for data form July 2006). The number looks
> reasonable, but I would like to be sure that I am not making a mistake.
> Therefore I would be grateful if you could answer the following questions: 
>
>  
>
> 1)       Is this approach to obtain a list of research and academic ISPs
> correct?
> 2)       Do you maybe know of such lists compiled before? 

        yes, check the NLANR/CAIDA data and the old MERIT/ISI datasets
        for NSFnet-era policy splits.

> 3)       If I keep not only the destination ASes, but also all ASes on the
> AS paths towards these destination I obtain a list of about 1400 ASes. How
> should I understand this? Does it mean that some research and academic
> destinations are reachable from Abilene only by traversing the commercial
> Internet?
>
> 4)       Of course, research and academic ASes are often well connected to
> the commercial Internet. My guess is that in most cases their peering
> relationship is "customer-provider", where commercial ASes are providers. Is
> it possible that an academic AS is a provider for some commercial ASes? If
> so, does it happen often?

        some universities have "startup" entites that are spun up under the
        perview of the university.  imho, its not common, but does happen.
 
>  
>
> Thank you in advance for your comments.
>
> Maciej Kurant
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  
>
> =============================================
>
>  
>
> EPFL IC ISC LCA3
>
> Maciej Kurant
>
> PhD Student
>
> CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
>
>  
>
> web site:   <http://lcawww.epfl.ch/kurant> http://lcawww.epfl.ch/kurant
>
>  
>
> =============================================
>
>