A study of the structure and vulnerabilities of metropolitan area networks

In recent years, there have been numerous geographically localized disruptions in Internet connectivity, as a result of malicious or natural causes. Though Internet-wide vulnerabilities have been studied extensively, the robustness of metropolitan area networks is still not well understood. In this paper, we study structural properties and vulnerabilities in metropolitan area networks, and develop techniques to monitor failures by small detection sets. By combining geolocation techniques with traceroute based measurements, we collect a large data set for 12 of the 25 most populated metropolitan regions in the US. Our analysis reveals that the structure of these paths gives superior insights into the robustness of metropolitan area networks as compared to the topological structure of the graph induced by these paths, which has been traditionally studied.