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The envisioned capabilities of mobile edge computing are predicated on a delivery infrastructure with capacity, ubiquity, robustness, and capabilities to serve a country-wide user base. In this paper, we present an empirical study of key aspects of mobile edge infrastructure toward the goal of understanding their current characteristics and identifying future deployments. We start by analyzing a dataset of over 4M cell tower locations in the US. We evaluate the geographic characteristics of deployments and highlight how locations correspond to population density in major metropolitan areas and in rural areas. We also show how deployments have been arranged along highways throughout the US. Our analysis highlight areas where new deployments would be warranted. Finally, we analyze how cell tower deployments correspond to current major data center locations and assess how micro servers might be deployed to improve response times and to better serve customers. 

Physical infrastructures that facilitate e.g., delivery of power, water and communication capabilities are of intrinsic importance in our daily lives. Accurate maps of physical infrastructures are important for permitting, maintenance, repair and growth but can be considered a commercial and/or security risk. In this paper, we describe a method for obfuscating physical infrastructure maps that removes sensitive details while preserving key features that are important in commercial and research applications. We employ a three-tiered approach: tier 1 does simple location fuzzing, tier 2 maintains connectivity details but randomizes node/link locations, while at tier 3 only distributional properties of a network are preserved. We implement our tiered approach in a tool called Bokeh which operates on GIS shapefiles that include detailed location information of infrastructure and produces obfuscated maps. We describe a case study that applies Bokeh to a number of Internet Service Provider maps. The case study highlights how each tier removes increasing amounts of detail from maps. We discuss how Bokeh can be generally applied to other physical infrastructures or in local services that are increasingly used for e-marketing. 

Understanding the nature and characteristics of Internet events such as route changes and outages can serve as the starting point for improvements in network configurations, management and monitoring practices. However, the scale, diversity, and dynamics of network infrastructure makes event detection and analysis challenging. In this paper, we describe a new approach to Internet event measurement, identification and analysis that provides a broad and detailed perspective without the need for new or dedicated infrastructure or additional network traffic. Our approach is based on analyzing data that is readily available from Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers. NTP is one of the few on-by-default services on clients, thus NTP servers have a broad perspective on Internet behavior. We develop a tool for analyzing NTP traces called Tezzeract, which applies Robust Principal Components Analysis to detect Internet events. We demonstrate Tezzeract’s efficacy by conducting controlled experiments and by applying it to data collected over a period of 3 months from 19 NTP servers. We also compare and contrast Tezzeract’s perspective with reported outages and events identified through active probing. We find that while there is commonality across methods, NTP-based monitoring provides a unique perspective that complements prior methods.