Understanding the topological properties of Internet traffic: A view from the edge

Traffic between an edge network and the rest of the Internet can be represented as a dynamic loop-free graph. Understanding in depth the dynamics in time and space (spatial structure, topological breadth, destination persistency, traffic dominating paths) of this graph provides significant insight on the Internet internal architecture and capabilities. This paper analyzes inter-domain traffic from a large campus network based on one month by way of Netflow measurements. Our analysis reveals the topological properties and structure of the traffic graph (breadth, depth, volume), the stability of contacted destinations and the relationship between their popularity and their path length. Based on the observed traffic, we explore the suitability of a simple mathematical model to describe the structure of the outgoing traffic graph.