Static and Dynamic Analysis of the Internet's Susceptibility to Faults and Attacks

— We analyze the susceptibility of the Internet to random faults, malicious attacks, and mixtures of faults and attacks. We analyze actual Internet data, as well as simulated data created with network models. The network models generalize previous research, and allow generation of graphs ranging from uniform to preferential, and from static to dynamic. We introduce new metrics for analyzing the connectivity and performance of networks which improve upon metrics used in earlier research. Previous research has shown that preferential networks like the Internet are more robust to random failures compared to uniform networks. We find that preferential networks, including the Internet, are more robust only when more than 95% of failures are random faults, and robustness is measured with average diameter. The advantage of preferential networks disappears with alternative metrics, and when a small fraction of faults are attacks. We also identify dynamic characteristics of the Internet whic...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Seung-Taek Park, Alexy Khrabrov, David M. Pennock, Steve Lawrence, C. Lee Giles, Lyle H. Ungar
• Keywords: Communications, INFOCOM 2003, Network Models, Preferential Networks, Random Faults