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We investigate network peering location choices, focusing on whether networks opt for distant peering sites even when nearby options are available. We conduct a network-wide cloud-based traceroute campaign using virtual machine instances from four major cloud providers to identify peering locations and calculate the “peering stretch”: the extra distance networks travel beyond the nearest data center to their actual peering points. Our results reveal a median peering stretch of 300 kilometers, with some networks traveling as much as 6,700 kilometers. We explore the characteristics of networks that prefer distant peering points and the potential motivations behind these choices, providing insights into digital sovereignty and cybersecurity implications. 

The Venezuelan crisis, unfolding over the past decade, has garnered international attention due to its impact on various sectors of civil society. While studies have extensively covered the crisis's effects on public health, energy, and water management, this paper delves into a previously unexplored area - the impact on Venezuela's Internet infrastructure. Amidst Venezuela's multifaceted challenges, understanding the repercussions of this critical aspect of modern society becomes imperative for the country's recovery. Leveraging measurements from various sources, we present a comprehensive view of the changes undergone by the Venezuelan network in the past decade. Our study reveals the significant impact of the crisis captured by different signals, including bandwidth stagnation, limited growth on network infrastructure growth, and high latency compared to the Latin American average. Beyond offering a new perspective on the Venezuelan crisis, our study can help inform attempts at devising strategies for its recovery. 

We present a longitudinal study of intercontinental long-haul links (LHL) - links with latencies significantly higher than that of all other links in a traceroute path. Our study is motivated by the recognition of these LHLs as a network-layer manifestation of transoceanic undersea cables. We present a methodology and associated processing system for identifying long-haul links in traceroute measurements, and report on our findings from. We apply this system to a large corpus of traceroute data and report on multiple aspects of long haul connectivity including country-level prevalence, routers as international gateways, preferred long-haul destinations, and the evolution of these characteristics over a 7 year period. 

An organization-level topology of the Internet is a valuable resource with uses that range from the study of organizations’ footprints and Internet centralization trends, to analysis of the dynamics of the Internet’s corporate structures as result of (de)mergers and acquisitions. Current approaches to infer this topology rely exclusively on WHOIS databases and are thus impacted by its limitations, including errors and outdated data. We argue that a collaborative, operator-oriented database such as PeeringDB can bring a complementary perspective from the legally-bounded information available in WHOIS records. We present as2org+, a new framework that leverages self-reported information available on PeeringDB to boost the state-of-the-art WHOIS-based methodologies. We discuss the challenges and opportunities with using PeeringDB records for AS-to-organization mappings, present the design of as2org+ and demonstrate its value identifying companies operating in multiple continents and mergers and acquisitions over a five-year period.