aSHIIP: Autonomous Generator of Random Internet-like Topologies with Inter-domain Hierarchy

Numerous studies based on complex measurement platforms have been carried out for over ten years now in order to discover the Internet topology on domain level. It turns out that this topology exhibits certain invariant properties such as a distribution of node degree. This distribution follows a power law. Moreover, the revealed topology is hierarchical. The hierarchy is caused by commercial contracts signed between domain operators. The routing realized by BGP is influenced by these relationships because operators do not want to make public the routes they know, as announcing certain routes would deprive them of a possible financial benefit. Consequently, routes available in BGP tables are valley-free. This fact has an impact on the performance of protocols which are proposed notably to assure the QoS. In order to evaluate the performance of new protocols in the inter-domain context their designers have to have at their disposal a random topology generator which is able to furnish a random graph whose nodes´ degree follows a power law typical for the Internet, and to impose the commercial hierarchy on it. Our a SHIIP (autonomous Supelec Hierarchy Inter-domain Program) does both. It is a reliable flat Internet-like topology generator which also allows the modeler to introduce the realistic hierarchy.