Modelling the Complex Internet Topology

Abstract

Internet is one of the most impressive creatures of our civilization; it has literally changed the ways we do business, communication, education, entertainment, and many other activities today. For example, one can conveniently contact friends by email and even video conversation based on the Internet. You may wonder how the Internet delivers emails from one end to the other end, and how the Internet makes a connection between two computers at the ends? When you are searching some useful information through the Internet by using a search engine such as Google, have you thought of how it works? When the so-called Worm virus spreads throughout the Internet, have you ever thought of how a virus propagates from a few end-hosts to the entire huge network? Technically, all these problems rely on the Internet route protocols [1], searching algorithms [2], etc., and the virus spreading depends heavily on the Internet topology [3].