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On the impact of layer-2 on node degree distribution

Published: 01 November 2010 Publication History

Abstract

The Internet topology data collected through traceroute exploration has been extensively studied in the past. In particular, a remarkable property of the Internet, the power-law shape of node degree distribution, drew the attention of the research community. Several studies have since questioned this property.
In this paper, based on a large dataset collected using mrinfo, we show that the node degree distribution is strongly impacted by the presence of layer-2 (L2) networks, such as switches. L2 devices interconnect a large number of routers, themselves being also involved in multiple L2 interconnections. Such a situation induces nodes with very high degree when analyzing the layer-3 (L3) graph with traceroute probing. Considering the physical design of a network, our analysis provides a lower bound on the bias generated by using only an L3 view. We also provide a model that can be a first step towards L2 aware topology generation.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    IMC '10: Proceedings of the 10th ACM SIGCOMM conference on Internet measurement
    November 2010
    496 pages
    ISBN:9781450304832
    DOI:10.1145/1879141
    • Program Chair:
    • Mark Allman
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    Published: 01 November 2010

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    Author Tags

    1. degree distribution
    2. layer-2
    3. mrinfo
    4. network topology

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    IMC '10: Internet Measurement Conference
    November 1 - 30, 2010
    Melbourne, Australia

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