Towards Modelling The Internet Topology - The Interactive Growth Model

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Interactive Growth model for Internet topology that accurately reproduces the power-law degree distribution and hierarchical structure of the AS graph, improving upon existing models.

Contribution

The paper presents a new dynamic model that jointly grows nodes and links, better capturing the Internet's AS topology features.

Findings

The IG model closely matches the degree distribution of the AS graph.

It accurately reproduces the hierarchical rich-club phenomenon.

The model outperforms previous topology generators.

Abstract

The Internet topology at the Autonomous Systems level (AS graph) has a power--law degree distribution and a tier structure. In this paper, we introduce the Interactive Growth (IG) model based on the joint growth of new nodes and new links. This simple and dynamic model compares favorable with other Internet power--law topology generators because it not only closely resembles the degree distribution of the AS graph, but also accurately matches the hierarchical structure, which is measured by the recently reported rich-club phenomenon.