A simple conceptual model for the Internet topology

In this paper, we develop a conceptual visual model for the Internet inter-domain topology. Recently, power-laws were used to describe the topology concisely. Despite their success, the power-laws do not help us visualize the topology, ie, draw the topology on paper by hand. In this paper, we deal with the following questions: can we identify a hierarchy in the Internet; how can I represent the network in an abstract graphical way? The focus of this paper is threefold. First, we characterize nodes using three metrics of topological "importance"\´, which we later use to identify a sense of hierarchy. Second, we identify some new topological properties. We then find that the Internet has a highly connected core and identify layers of nodes in decreasing importance surrounding the core. Finally, we show that our observations suggest an intuitive model. The topology can be seen as a jellyfish, where the core is in the middle of the cap, and one-degree nodes form its legs