The flattening internet topology: natural evolution, unsightly barnacles or contrived collapse?

  • Authors:
  • Phillipa Gill;Martin Arlitt;Zongpeng Li;Anirban Mahanti

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada;University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada and HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA;University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada;IIT Delhi, Delhi, India

  • Venue:
  • PAM'08 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Passive and active network measurement
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

In this paper we collect and analyze traceroute measurements to show that large content providers (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!) are deploying their own wide-area networks, bringing their networks closer to users, and bypassing Tier-1 ISPs on many paths. This trend, should it continue and be adopted by more content providers, could flatten the Internet topology, and may result in numerous other consequences to users, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), content providers, and network researchers.