Reviewer: Amy Freestone
Date: 10-20-2005
How would you rate this paper, relative to others we have read? top 10%
How would you rate your kowledge of the topic of this paper? novice
What problem or issue does the paper address? Why is it important?
The paper presents a method for discovering the topology of an Ethernet network with no additions to it except that most of the hosts run a small bit of daemon code. This is important because it can work on devices which do not support SNMP.
What are the main contributions of the paper and why are they important?
The main contribution of the paper is a method by which a small amount of daemon code running on most of the hosts in a network and one running the mapper code is sufficient to determine the simplest possible topology of the network in which they are contained without requiring anything other than normal operation from the switches and hubs in the network.
How significant are these contributions relative to previous work?
I lack knowledge of previous work, but the authors claim to have created the first method for discovering network topology that works on Ethernet networks where the equipment does not support SNMP, making it a fairly significant contribution.
Give detailed comments justifying your view of the paper.