Table of Contents
- 1 What is EyeP?
- 2 Who should use EyeP?
- 3 What are the data sources used by EyeP?
- 4 What does the first scene picture in the main page show?
- 5 How do I see further allocation from RIRs to ISPs.
- 6 How to interpret the bars and small rectangles inside /8 address blocks?
- 7 Why do I see mixed color rectangles in some /8 blocks, e.g. 24/8?
- 8 How do I see address prefixes shown in BGP routing tables?
- 9 How to interpret orange rectangles under the axis?
- 10 What are the possible reasons people announce so many levels of overlapping prefixes?
- 11 How to get more detailed information about an IP address range?
- 12 After clicking a specific /8 block, say 24/8, how to interpret the table underneath the picture?
- 13 How to interpret the popup window that shows BGP prefix announcements?
1 What is EyeP?
EyeP is a
visualization tool that helps understanding of two important Internet
data sources: IP address allocation and BGP prefix announcements.
- For IP address allocation, the tool makes it convenient to check the status of individual blocks. For instance, you can instantly dig out an address block's allocation date, owner, the owner's country and city, and even more.
- For BGP prefix announcements, EyeP uses an innovative way to visualize the well known covering and covered prefixes, so that you can investigate the prefix tree structure of routing tables. You can also easily go into history, and see when prefixes started appearing in BGP.
- It is also interesting to correlate the two factors. For example, at the age of IPv4 address exhaustion, it is natural to ask who have got IPv4 addresses and are not using them in BGP, even long after the address allocation.
2 Who should use EyeP?
Network operators and researchers who
- want to keep an eyep on their own IP prefix announcements from the global BGP perspective;
- or want to check out how other ISPs announce their prefixes;
- care about exaustion of IPv4 address space, or are interested in address allocation algorithms.
3 What are the data sources used by EyeP?
4 What does the first scene picture in the main page show?
On the first scene of the website, there is a logic axis that is
broken into eight lines. The eight lines altogether represent the
whole IPv4 address space. We use this way of visualization due to the
width limit of a computer screen, and the amount of information we try
to visualize. Each line represents 32 /8 blocks, and there are
32*8=256 of them in total. According to different roles that /8
address blocks play, we classify them into five categories as shown in
the following table. This table shows statuses of /8 blocks from the
perspective of IANA, who is in charge of the whole IPv4 address space.
| Status | Description | Examples | Icon in EyeP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reserved | Reserved by IANA for special use. | 127/8: loopback |
 Reserved
|
| Unallocated | IANA's address pool (When the project was started, there were still certain number of unallocated /8 blocks, but we run out of them today.) | 1/8 |
 Unallocated
|
| Legacy | Assigned to end users before the RIR system was established | 3/8: Allocated to General Electric Company |
 Legacy
|
| Multicast | Addresses used for Multicast only | 224/4 |
 Multicast
|
| Allocation to RIRs | Address blocks allocated to the five RIRs at unit of /8 | 24/8: allocation to ARIN |
 to ARIN to RIPE to APNIC to LACNIC to AFRINIC
|
5 How do I see further allocation from RIRs to ISPs.
Check the box saying "RIRs allocation" on the top of the picture.
6 How to interpret the bars and small rectangles inside /8 address blocks?
Inside /8 blocks, further allocation from RIRs to ISPs are shown as rectangles. The width
of an rectangle is proportional to the number of addresses. Therefore if the number of addresses
contained in one block, say a /24 block, is too small, the rectangle would be squeezed into a vertical
bar. So, in order to zoom in the picture and get more detailed information in a /8 block, users need to click on
the correspondent area of the picture.
| Further allocation from | Icon in EyeP |
|---|---|
| ARIN |
|
| RIPE NCC |
|
| APNIC |
|
| LACNIC |
|
| AFRINIC |
|
7 Why do I see mixed color rectangles in some /8 blocks, e.g. 24/8?
In general, the hierarchical allocation process holds, but in reality there are several types of exceptions. For instance, the 24/8 block is delegated to ARIN, and the exception is that two small blocks inside it, i.e. 24.132/17 and 24.132.128/17, are transferred to RIPE. That is why you see two blue rectangles inside 24/8.
8 How do I see address prefixes shown in BGP routing tables?
Check the box "Seen in BGP" on the top of the picture.
9 How to interpret orange rectangles under the axis?
Basically, we are trying to do the same thing of drawing announced
prefixes under the axis as drawing allocated address blocks above the
axis. However, prefixes in routing tables have coverage
relationships. Namely, a covering prefix may contain many covered prefixex.
EyeP uses an innovative way to visualize such cases by putting covered
prefixes under their covering parent prefix. The following picture shows
an example:
10 What are the possible reasons people announce so many levels of overlapping prefixes?
Load balancing, multihoming, etc.
11 How to get more detailed information about an IP address range?
EyeP is built with a "zooming in" and "zooming out" feature using Ajax.
So in order to get more detailed information about an address range, simply
click the corresponding block *above* the axis. And in order to get out, simply
click the zooming bar on left of the visualization picture:
12 After clicking a specific /8 block, say 24/8, how to interpret the table underneath the picture?
Besides visualization, we also provide tabular information of
allocated address blocks from RIRs to ISPs. For instance, after zooming
into 24/8, a tabular table will be shown as follows:
Each entry(row) in the table corresponds to an allocated block. From left to right, this table shows each block's allocation date, RIR, organization name, in which country and city the organization is located. Besides, the table also shows the number of covering, exactly matched, and covered BGP prefixes for each allocated block. When the number of prefixes is non-zero, the number will be made into a pointer. The pointer leads to a popup window where detailed information about BGP prefixes are shown.
Each entry(row) in the table corresponds to an allocated block. From left to right, this table shows each block's allocation date, RIR, organization name, in which country and city the organization is located. Besides, the table also shows the number of covering, exactly matched, and covered BGP prefixes for each allocated block. When the number of prefixes is non-zero, the number will be made into a pointer. The pointer leads to a popup window where detailed information about BGP prefixes are shown.
13 How to interpret the popup window that shows BGP prefix announcements?
The popup window gives detailed information about BGP prefixes. For
instance, after clicking on the number of covered prefixes for the
allocated block 24.0.0.0/12, the following window will pop up:
The table shows each BGP prefix's origin AS number, the AS name, as well as its historical appearance in global BGP routing tables. It shows historical appearance in the granularity of month, i.e. how many days each prefix has appeared within a month. By default, appearance in the current year is shown. If you want to go back in history, click a different year on top of the page.
The table shows each BGP prefix's origin AS number, the AS name, as well as its historical appearance in global BGP routing tables. It shows historical appearance in the granularity of month, i.e. how many days each prefix has appeared within a month. By default, appearance in the current year is shown. If you want to go back in history, click a different year on top of the page.
| This page is maintained by Lucas Wang @ UCLA. Please send suggestions/bugs/questions to eyep at cs.ucla.edu |
|