Jellyfish: A conceptual model for the as Internet topology

Several novel concepts and tools have revolutionized our understanding of the Internet topology. Most of the existing efforts attempt to develop accurate analytical models. In this paper, our goal is to develop an effective conceptual model: A model that can be easily drawn by hand, while at the same time, it captures significant macroscopic properties. We build the foundation for our model with two thrusts: a) We identify new topological properties and b) we provide metrics to quantify the topological importance of a node. We propose the jellyfish as a model for the inter-domain Internet topology. We show that our model captures and represents the most significant topological properties. Furthermore, we observe that the jellyfish has lasting value: It describes the topology for more than six years.