Tangled: Analysis of AS-level Interconnection in LAC region

Abstract

Due to its importance, the Internet topology at the Autonomous System(AS) level has been attracting much attention from the research community for over a decade. Internet connectivity is increasingly recognized as a fundamental lever for development, triggering socio-economic progress in the society as a whole. Rich local interconnections between the ASes within a region make up a reliable Internet environment, which further helps to foster the Internet business in the region by promoting innovation and empowering local Internet entities to grow. We propose an empirical study of the topological organization of the Internet ecosystem in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). While basic connectivity to the global Internet exists throughout the region, the availability and quality of the infrastructure varies widely between different countries or even between different geographical areas within the same country. Using BGP routing data and information about the business relationship between ASes active in the region, we build the graph of Internet connectivity at the country level. We identify how many international ASes operate locally, connecting the local network to other countries within the region and to the global Internet. Based on this information, we analyze how prone a country is to disconnection, both as a consequence of government censorship or external attacks on the local Internet ecosystem. Next, we characterize Internet performance in LAC and observe very high latency between different countries and, sometimes, even within the same country. We observe that a large fraction of paths interconnecting different destinations circuit through the US, and quantify the fraction of destinations in the LAC region that are possibly affected by this phenomenon.