The internet's unexploited path diversity

• Published in: IEEE communications letters Vol. 14; no. 5; pp. 474 - 476
• Main Authors: Arjona-Villicana, P. D., Constantinou, C. C., Stepanenko, A. S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.05.2010; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Access methods and protocols, osi model; Advertisements; Applied sciences; Borders; connectivity; Convergence; Exact sciences and technology; Graph theory; IEEE news; Interconnected networks; Internet; IP networks; Joining processes; Networks; Networks and services in france and abroad; Numerical analysis; Operators; path diversity; Policies; Routing protocols; Stability; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Teleprocessing networks. Isdn; Topology; Autonomous system; path diversity; connectivity; Transmission protocol; policies; Connectedness; Numerical method; Internet; Directed graph; Implementation
• ISSN: 1089-7798; 1558-2558
• DOI: 10.1109/LCOMM.2010.05.092483

The connectivity of the Internet at the Autonomous System level is influenced by the network operator policies implemented. These in turn impose a direction to the announcement of address advertisements and, consequently, to the paths that can be used to reach back such destinations. We propose to use directed graphs to properly represent how destinations propagate through the Internet and the number of arc-disjoint paths to quantify this network¿s path diversity. Moreover, in order to understand the effects that policies have on the connectivity of the Internet, numerical analyses of the resulting directed graphs were conducted. Results demonstrate that, even after policies have been applied, there is still path diversity which the Border Gateway Protocol cannot currently exploit.