A critical look at power law modelling of the Internet

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the effectiveness of power law models in representing Internet traffic and topology, highlighting current research gaps and the limitations impacting network performance improvements.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of existing power law models and identifies key shortcomings and open questions for future research.

Findings

Power law models often fail to accurately capture Internet traffic and topology.

Current models have significant gaps that hinder practical network performance improvements.

The paper highlights the need for refined models to better inform network design.

Abstract

This paper takes a critical look at the usefulness of power law models of the Internet. The twin focuses of the paper are Internet traffic and topology generation. The aim of the paper is twofold. Firstly it summarises the state of the art in power law modelling particularly giving attention to existing open research questions. Secondly it provides insight into the failings of such models and where progress needs to be made for power law research to feed through to actual improvements in network performance.