Our paper "Cloudy with a Chance of Short RTTs: Analyzing Cloud Connectivity in the Internet" has been accepted at ACM Internet Measurements Conference (IMC) 2021! This work presents the first comprehensive study of cloud reachability from a global perspective, measuring how accessible major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are from different locations worldwide.
Using measurements from over 10,000 RIPE Atlas probes across months of data collection, we analyzed round-trip times, reachability patterns, and routing characteristics to major cloud platforms. Our findings reveal significant geographic disparities in cloud accessibility, with different providers showing distinct coverage patterns. We also found that Internet routing and access technology choices significantly impact end-to-end performance to cloud services.
Understanding cloud reachability has practical implications for developers choosing optimal cloud regions, operators planning network connectivity, and researchers modeling cloud-based applications. The research received attention from the operational community through featured articles on RIPE Labs and coverage in the APNIC network operator community.
We're making our measurement data publicly available to enable reproducibility and follow-up research, continuing our commitment to open science and measurement-driven networking research.
Conference: ACM IMC 2021
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