Link-Level Network Topology Generation

Internet topology generation involves producing synthetic network topologies that imitate the characteristics of the Internet. Although the accuracy of newly developed network protocols or algorithms do not considerably depend on the underlying topology, the performance generally depends on the topology. As a result, synthetic topologies are widely utilized by network researchers to analyze performance of their design in simulation or emulation environments. Previous studies on the Internet topology generation have ignored the major building block of the networks, i.e., subnetworks. Generated topologies are composed of point to point links. These networks do not ref ect some crucial characteristics of the Internet such as the clustering of the Internet backbone. In this study, we propose subnet based Internet topology generation to better ref ect the underlying building blocks of the Internet. Subnet based synthetic topologies capture both the degree distribution and the subnet distribution characteristics of sample Internet topologies.