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Published Articles >> Table of Contents >> Abstract
March/April 2006 (Vol. 8, No. 2)
pp. 3-6
Recent Research Provides New Picture of Router-Level Internet
Sara Robinson
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DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MCSE.2006.31
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Although the Internet is manmade, its exact structure is a mystery. Most of its component networks are owned and managed by private companies that keep their hardware specifications secret for commercial and security reasons. In this respect, the Internet--routers and the network hops between them--has much in common with other real-world networks, such as the World Wide Web. They, too, have formed organically, and their topologies and growth patterns remain elusive. In the late 1990s, several groups of researchers published studies suggesting that the graphs of many such real-world networks are "heavy-tailed"--meaning they have an unexpectedly large number of high-degree nodes. Following these studies, physicists at the University of Notre Dame, led by Albert-Laszlo Barabási, published two highly influential papers describing a growth mechanism that might explain this phenomenon as well as a key feature of networks generated by it: an Achilles heel.
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 References
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[1] J.C. Doyle et al., "The 'Robust Yet Fragile' Nature of the Internet," Proc. Nat'l Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 102, no. 41, 2005, pp. 14497–14502.
[2] R. Albert, H. Jeong, and A.-L. Barabási, "Diameter of the World Wide Web," Nature, vol. 401, Sept. 1999, pp. 130–131.
[3] J.M. Kleinberg et al., "The Web as a Graph: Measurements, Models, and Methods," Proc. 5th Ann. Int'l Conf. Combinatorics and Computing, LNCS 1627, Springer-Verlag, 1999, pp. 1–18.
[4] B. Huberman and L. Adamic, "Growth Dynamics of the World Wide Web," Nature, vol. 401, Sept. 1999, pp. 131–133.
[5] A.-L. Barabási and R. Albert, "Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks," Science, vol. 286, no. 5439, 1999, pp. 509–512.
[6] M. Faloutsos, P. Faloutsos, and C. Faloutsos, "On Power Law Relationships of the Internet Topology," ACM SIGCOMM Computer Comm. Rev., vol. 29, no. 4, 1999, pp. 251–262.
[7] G. Yule, "A Mathematical Theory of Evolution Based on the Conclusions of Dr. J.C. Willis," Philosophical Trans. Royal Soc. London (Series B), vol. 213, 1925, pp. 21–87.
[8] R. Albert, H. Jeong, and A.-L. Barabási, "Error and Attack Tolerance in Complex Networks," Nature, vol. 406, July 2000, pp. 378–382.
[9] J.M. Carlson and J. Doyle, "Highly Optimized Tolerance: A Mechanism for Power Laws in Designed Systems," Physics Rev. E, vol. 60, no. 2, 1999, pp. 1412–1427.
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 Additional Information
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Index Terms- Internet, Web, power laws
Citation:
Sara Robinson,
"Recent Research Provides New Picture of Router-Level Internet,"
Computing in Science and Engineering,
vol. 8,
no. 2,
pp. 3-6,
Mar/Apr,
2006
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