Team for Research in
Ubiquitous Secure Technology

Citation
Bernard Wong, Ivan Stoyanov, Emin Gun Sirer. "Geolocalization on the Internet through Constraint Satisfaction". Proceedings of Workshop on Real, Large Distributed Systems (WORLDS), Workshop on Real, Large Distributed Systems (WORLDS), November, 2006.

Abstract
This paper outlines a novel, comprehensive framework for geolocalization, that is, determining the physical location of Internet hosts based on network measurements. The core insight behind this framework is to pose the geolocalization problem formally as one of error-minimizing constraint satisfaction, to create a system of constraints by deriving them aggressively from network measurements, and to solve the system using cheap and accurate geometric methods. The framework is general and accommodates both positive and negative constraints, that is, constraints on where the node can or cannot be, respectively. It can reason in the presence of uncertainty, enabling it to gracefully cope with aggressively derived constraints that may contain errors. Since the solution space is represented geometrically as a region bounded by Bezier curves, the framework yields an accurate set of all points where the target may be located. Preliminary results on PlanetLab show promise; the framework can localize the median node to within 22 miles, a factor of three better than previous approaches, with little error.

Electronic downloads

• octant-worlds.pdf · application/pdf · 243 kbytes

• HTML

  Bernard Wong, Ivan Stoyanov, Emin Gun Sirer. <a
  href="http://www.truststc.org/pubs/179.html"
  >Geolocalization on the Internet through Constraint
  Satisfaction</a>, Proceedings of Workshop on Real,
  Large Distributed Systems (WORLDS), Workshop on Real, Large
  Distributed Systems (WORLDS), November, 2006.

• Plain text

  Bernard Wong, Ivan Stoyanov, Emin Gun Sirer.
  "Geolocalization on the Internet through Constraint
  Satisfaction". Proceedings of Workshop on Real, Large
  Distributed Systems (WORLDS), Workshop on Real, Large
  Distributed Systems (WORLDS), November, 2006.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{WongStoyanovSirer06_GeolocalizationOnInternetThroughConstraintSatisfaction,
      author = {Bernard Wong and Ivan Stoyanov and Emin Gun Sirer},
      title = {Geolocalization on the Internet through Constraint
                Satisfaction},
      booktitle = {Proceedings of Workshop on Real, Large Distributed
                Systems (WORLDS)},
      organization = {Workshop on Real, Large Distributed Systems
                (WORLDS)},
      month = {November},
      year = {2006},
      abstract = {This paper outlines a novel, comprehensive
                framework for geolocalization, that is,
                determining the physical location of Internet
                hosts based on network measurements. The core
                insight behind this framework is to pose the
                geolocalization problem formally as one of
                error-minimizing constraint satisfaction, to
                create a system of constraints by deriving them
                aggressively from network measurements, and to
                solve the system using cheap and accurate
                geometric methods. The framework is general and
                accommodates both positive and negative
                constraints, that is, constraints on where the
                node can or cannot be, respectively. It can reason
                in the presence of uncertainty, enabling it to
                gracefully cope with aggressively derived
                constraints that may contain errors. Since the
                solution space is represented geometrically as a
                region bounded by Bezier curves, the framework
                yields an accurate set of all points where the
                target may be located. Preliminary results on
                PlanetLab show promise; the framework can localize
                the median node to within 22 miles, a factor of
                three better than previous approaches, with little
                error.},
      URL = {http://www.truststc.org/pubs/179.html}
  }
  

Posted by Kelly Patwell on 13 Feb 2007.
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