%0 Conference Paper %B ACM/USENIX Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) %D 2013 %T Network Fingerprinting: TTL-Based Router Signature %A Yves Vanaubel %A Jean-Jacques Pansiot %A Pascal Mérindol %A Benoit Donnet %K fingerprinting %K initial TTL %K MPLS router signature %K network discovery %X

Fingerprinting networking equipment has many potential applications and benefits in network management and security. More generally, it is useful for the understanding of network structures and their behaviors. In this paper, we describe a simple fingerprinting mechanism based on the initial TTL values used by routers to reply to various probing messages. We show that main classes
obtained using this simple mechanism are meaningful to distinguish routers platforms. Besides, it comes at a very low additional cost compared to standard active topology discovery measurements. As a proof of concept, we apply our method to gain more insight on the behavior of MPLS routers and to, thus, more accurately quantify their visible/invisible deployment.

%B ACM/USENIX Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) %C Barcelona, Spain %8 10/2013 %G eng %R 10.1145/2504730.2504761