Modeling the internet's large-scale topology

Soon Hyung Yook, Hawoong Jeong, Albert László Barabási

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Network generators that capture the Internet's large-scale topology are crucial for the development of efficient routing protocols and modeling Internet traffic. Our ability to design realistic generators is limited by the incomplete understanding of the fundamental driving forces that affect the Internet's evolution. By combining several independent databases capturing the time evolution, topology, and physical layout of the Internet, we identify the universal mechanisms that shape the Internet's router and autonomous system level topology. We find that the physical layout of nodes form a fractal set, determined by population density patterns around the globe. The placement of links is driven by competition between preferential attachment and linear distance dependence, a marked departure from the currently used exponential laws. The universal parameters that we extract significantly restrict the class of potentially correct Internet models and indicate that the networks created by all available topology generators are fundamentally different from the current Internet.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)13382-13386
Number of pages5
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume99
Issue number21
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Oct 2002
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Modeling the internet's large-scale topology'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this