An analysis of Internet inter-domain topology and route stability

Abstract

The Internet routing fabric is partitioned into several domains. Each domain represents a region of the fabric administered by a single commercial entity. Over the past two years, the routing fabric has experienced significant growth. From more than a year's worth of inter-domain routing traces, we analyze the Internet inter-domain topology, its route stability behavior, and the effect of growth on these characteristics. Our analysis reveals several interesting results. Despite growth, the degree distribution and the diameter of the inter-domain topology have remained relatively unchanged. Furthermore, there exists a four-level hierarchy of Internet domains classified by degree. However, connectivity between domains is significantly non-hierarchical. Despite increased connectivity at higher levels in the topology, the distribution of paths to prefixes from the backbone remained relatively unchanged. There is evidence that both route availability and the mean reachability duration have degraded with Internet growth.