Looking Glass automation: This code is developed as part IMPACT project on mapping AS-interconnections in different cities. More information about the general context of the project at http://onrg.cs.uoregon.edu/impact/
The specific task at hand is as follows. We mainly rely of traceroute measurements to recover the Internet topology. We use Looking Glass (LG) servers in order to conduct measurements from other locations. Each LG is (web-based) front-end that interfaces with a list of routers in back-end, and allows users to conduct network measurements (traceroute, ping, etc). An example of such a LG server at http://www.cogentco.com/en/network/looking-glass a simple Google search would yield many more.
We primarily use LGs to conduct traceroute and obtain BGP connectivity (AS paths). To automate the measurement (so that we do not need a person to manually go to a web site and start a measurement) we developed this code to achieve this goal. We have automated data collection from many LGs but there are still more LGs that we need to add our list.