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Title: Calypso’s Voyage: Charting Traceroute Paths Through Submarine Cables
As the backbone of global Internet connectivity, the submarine cable network (SCN) faces growing threats with serious economic and security implications. Strengthening its resilience requires a clear understanding of which cables and landing points are most critical. This depends on accurately mapping traffic onto the underlying infrastructure to identify vulnerabilities and assess their regional and global impact. Yet existing methods often lack the resolution and fidelity needed for such analysis, leaving researchers and policymakers without the insights to safeguard this vital system. This paper introduces Calypso, a framework for mapping traceroute paths to the submarine cables they traverse. Calypso integrates ownership records, routing metadata, and geographic constraints to infer cable usage despite the opacity of the SCN and challenges such as route virtualization and inland infrastructure. It also defines Route Stress, a traceroute-derived metric for estimating the relative importance of submarine cables. Through expert validation, failure analysis, and regional case studies, we demonstrate Calypso’s utility in revealing SCN dependencies and informing resilience efforts.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2107392
PAR ID:
10669142
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
ACM
Date Published:
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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