Research On Network Topology Discovery And Display Technology

As address space of IPv4is exhausting, it is essential to develop the next generation internet based on IPv6protocol. However, after the development of several decades, IPv4protocol would not be discarded immediately. Both IPv4and IPv6will play important roles for a long time. Moreover, those network topology discovery methods for IPv4networks can not be readily applied to IPv6networks. It is very necessary to develop new methods that are adequate for managing a network of IPv6and IPv4co-existence. Currently the topology discovery algorithms focus on managing the overlapped hosts, hierarchical and scalability of large-scale networks are ignored. The results of these methods are not intuitive. Another important research topic considered in this paper is how to provide an intuitive and handy topology map for network administrators.In this paper, we introduce the structure and properties of IPv4and IPv6protocol. Both dual-stack and tunnelling technology are explained in details. Then we categorise and compare methods of topology discovery existing in previous works. Some common difficulties in IPv6topology discovery are summarised. Based on these studies, we propose a distributed topology detecting method with ’main node-agent node’ hierarchical structures using ICMPv6protocol. At the same time, in handling the problem of large-scale topology map, we introduce a heuristic topology discovery algorithm (ACTL). The ACTL algorithm cluster network nodes with ant-colony algorithm and configure the layout with ’tension-gravitation model’. When network nodes changes, topology reconstruction method is used to reduce computational time.With the solutions of topology discovery and visualisation technology, we also designed a system for IPv4/IPv6co-existing networks. The system follows B/S, modular and distributed architecture, implements a complete workflow for discovering and visualising network topology.Finally, we evaluated each functional module of the system. The results showed that the system meets the requirements of discovering and visualising the topology of networks. Meanwhile, usability and extendability of the system is carefully considered.