Title: DNS-based Internet Client Clustering and Characterization

Authors: Azer Bestavros and Sumit Mehrotra

Date: June 5, 2001

Abstract:

This paper proposes a novel protocol which uses the Internet Domain
Name System (DNS) to partition Web clients into disjoint sets, each of
which is associated with a single DNS server. We define an L-DNS
cluster to be a grouping of Web Clients that use the same Local DNS
server to resolve Internet host names. We identify such clusters in
real-time using data obtained from a Web Server in conjunction with
that server's Authoritative DNS---both instrumented with an
implementation of our clustering algorithm. Using these clusters, we
perform measurements from four distinct Internet locations. Our
results show that L-DNS clustering enables a better estimation of
proximity of a Web Client to a Web Server than previously proposed
techniques. Thus, in a Content Distribution Network, a DNS-based
scheme that redirects a request from a web client to one of many
servers based on the client's name server coordinates (e.g.,
hops/latency/loss-rates between the client and servers) would perform
better with our algorithm.