Searching ISP Router Networks for Footprints of Engineering Design Consideration

Modeling router-level networks is a challenging task, for it is unclear today as how to represent such networks by a simple and accurate model of modest size and complexity. To provide more insights into router-level network modeling, this paper studies some topological features of several Internet service provider (ISP) networks. The main concern is on the relationships amongst bandwidth constraints, topological features, and engineering design consideration. Computer experiments show some highly unlikely topological structures to network congestion, which are common amongst several geographically independent ISP networks. It suggests that engineering design consideration paves a feasible way to model router-level networks. The findings in this paper may provide some new information toward developing a more realistic model for the router-level Internet.