IM-DB: Information retrieval system for interactive network-status analysis

To manage the changing conditions of the Internet and diagnose the cause of anomalies within it, network operators must obtain and analyze information from network devices such as routers and network monitoring tools. Of that information, route information exchanged by Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is essential for understanding the Internet at an inter-autonomous-system (AS) level. However, the information is not easily deployed for actual network management because of the enormous amount of the information and the difficulties in manipulating it. To overcome these problems, we propose IM-DB, a network information retrieval system for the interactive analysis and diagnosis of the Internet. Our IM-DB is based on a relational database and can store large amount of network information. By using the IM-DB, network operators can easily search, integrate, and explore information they require. We developed the first version of our IM-DB for storing BGP routing information. The experimental results using this prototype demonstrate the feasibility of our IM-DB.