Identifying submarine links via traceroute

[PAUL R BARFORD <pb () cs wisc edu>]

Hello,

I am a researcher at the University of Wisconsin.  My colleagues at Northwestern University and I are studying 
submarine cable infrastructure.

Our interest is in identifying submarine links in traceroute measurements.  Specifically, for a given end-to-end 
traceroute measurement, we would like to be able to identify when two hops are separated by a submarine cable.  Our 
initial focus has been on inter-hop latency, which can expose long links.  The challenge is that terrestrial long-haul 
links may have the same or longer link latencies as short submarine links. So, we're interested in whether there may be 
other features (e.g., persistent congestion, naming conventions in router interfaces, peering details, etc.) or 
techniques that would indicate submarine links.

Any thoughts or insights you might have would be greatly appreciated - off-list responses are welcome.

Thank you.

Regards, PB

Paul Barford
University of Wisconsin - Madison