Discovering a Large Scale Internet Topology: Complementary and Contrast View

The Chinese Internet, hosting the worlds largest population of Internet users, has largely remained as a black box due to the lack of large-scale measurement infrastructure and various other factors. In this paper, we characterize the Chinese Internet AS topology using measurements from both data and control planes. Our analysis emphasizes on the distinct characteristics of the regional network in comparison with the global Internet. To obtain a complete and accurate view, we combine multiple data sources in a complementary manner, including the traceroute conducted on both domestic servers and international Planetlab hosts at the data plane, as well as the RouteViews-based BGP routing information at the control plane. Our AS graph successfully captures 97% of the observable ASes in Chinese Internet. The topology is validated to be consistent with the well-known PFP model. Based on the measured topology, we further investigate the topological properties of the Chinese Internet by analyzing various graph-theoretic metrics. We found that the Chinese Internet preserves basic topological properties of global internet, such as power-law in node degree distribution and Pareto principle in international link distribution. This offers new insights for the Chinese Internet characterization and practical guidelines for future engineering optimization.