> I’m not sure on what use this data, if collected, would be. Latency is the most important. It's not operationally useful in any way that I can think of, but it is interesting (at least to me). It's possible that Bill has something in mind, though.
> [...] which is more meaningful a metric, AS-path or hop count? Good point. Before we can decide which is more useful, we have to decide what they would be useful for. But, I think it's not really feasible to analyze hop count, because you would have to collect that data with a huge number of traceroutes. Average/median AS-path length can be estimated by static analysis of BGP tables from various routers. > Many networks have a large number of routers but the packets don’t stay in them very long. It wouldn't be a very good router if the packets hung around for a long time before leaving :) On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 11:26 PM Ben Cannon <b...@6by7.net> wrote: > This begs the question, which is more meaningful a metric, AS-path or hop > count? Many networks have a large number of routers but the packets don’t > stay in them very long. > > -Ben. > > > On Nov 21, 2018, at 8:10 PM, Bryce Wilson <br...@thenetworknerds.ca> > wrote: > > I don’t have any hard statistics but I notice that on a majority of ASs on > bgp.he.net, the average AS path length is between 4 and 5. As for the > average number of hops, it clearly depends on what type of traffic and many > ASNs have more than one router. Going on my own experience I would say > between 8 and 10 hops would be the average of non-cached content. If you > included cached content such as cdns and caches then the actual average > might be closer to 5 to 7. This is only an estimate from my own network and > those of my clients so the actual value may be completely different. > > As with what others have said, I’m not sure on what use this data, if > collected, would be. Latency is the most important. > > > Thanks ~ Bryce Wilson, AS202313, EVIX, AS137933 > > >