Graph reduction for emulated network experimentation

Abstract

Network researchers and operators often turn to emulation and simulation for testing and experimentation.Obtaining topologies that reflect the graph characteristics of the Internet, while of small enough order to emulate or simulate on commodity hardware, however, is a difficult undertaking.In this work, we reexamine a previous study devoted to generating Internet-like topologies by reducing Autonomous System-level Internet instances to a more manageable scale.In addition to replicating the original experiment using Routeviews data from 2001, we extend the prior work’s methodology to more current data and to another data set compiled by the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis.Finally, we introduce a new Internet graph reduction method, and examine its performance on both data sets.