Reviewer: Max Podlesny
Date: 10-20-2005
How would you rate this paper, relative to others we have read? top 25%, but not top 10%
How would you rate your kowledge of the topic of this paper? familiar, but not expert
What problem or issue does the paper address? Why is it important?
In the paper the design of the tool that allows to discover the Ethernet topology without assistance from the network elements is described. That tool is helpful for checking network to figure out some problems that arise in the network.
What are the main contributions of the paper and why are they important?
The main contribution is of designing the method that can discover the Ethernet topology just by sending packets through the network.
How significant are these contributions relative to previous work?
Tools designed in previous work are based on SNMP as whereas this tool does not use SNMP and relies on the behavior of own traffic only. I think that it is a significant contribution
Give detailed comments justifying your view of the paper.
The paper is written in a good style. A good theoretical bases is provided including correctness and completeness of the algorithm. I did not find any weak point in the paper. I suppose that using the tool in real network would be very helpful.