Classification Topic

Explanation of the fields in the classification topics

• timestamp: Timestamp (as UNIX epoch in seconds) for which the classification was run
• scope: Scope AS for the following dependencies
• equal: List of dependencies with equal comparison rank.
  • Format: (AS, BGP score, BGP rank, TR score, TR rank, comparison rank)
• mismatched: List of dependencies with different comparison rank.
  • Format: (AS, BGP score, BGP rank, BGP comparison rank, TR score, TR rank, TR comparison rank)
• bgp_only: List of dependencies only occurring in BGP.
  • Format: (AS, score, rank)
• tr_only: List of dependencies only occurring in traceroute.
  • Format: (AS, score, rank)

Rank vs. Comparison Rank

The equal and mismatched list entries contain more than one rank. The [BGP|TR] rank refers to the rank of the dependency when looking at all dependencies of the scope AS in BGP or traceroute.

The comparison rank refers to a special ranking system that only takes overlapping dependencies between BGP and traceroute into account. In this ranking system, BGP/traceroute-only dependencies are not included and the remaining dependencies are ranked by standard competition ranking, i.e., dependencies with the same score get the same rank and gaps in the ranking may be possible.

Example

Input. ASes 2 and 3 have the same hegemony score for traceroute and will get the same comparison rank.

BGP AS	BGP Score	TR AS	TR Score
1	1.0	2	0.9
2	0.8	3	0.9
3	0.7	4	0.8
5	0.6	5	0.7

Ranking BGP

BGP AS	Rank	Comparison Rank
1	0	- (BGP-only)
2	1	0
3	2	1
5	3	2

Ranking traceroute

TR AS	Rank	Comparison Rank
2	0	0
3	1	0
4	2	- (TR-only)
5	3	2 (gap)

As a consequence, only ASes 2 and 5 are considered equal, whereas AS 3 is not.