Network Inference from TraceRoute Measurements: Internet Topology 'Species'

Internet mapping projects generally consist in sampling the network from a limited set of sources by using traceroute probes. This methodology, akin to the merging of spanning trees from the different sources to a set of destinations, leads necessarily to a partial, incomplete map of the Internet. Accordingly, determination of Internet topology characteristics from such sampled maps is in part a problem of statistical inference. Our contribution begins with the observation that the inference of many of the most basic topological quantities – including network size and degree characteristics – from traceroute measurements is in fact a version of the so-called ‘species problem’ in statistics. This observation has important implications, since species problems are often quite challenging. We focus here on the most fundamental example of a traceroute internet species: the number of nodes in a network. Specifically, ∗Contact Author: Eric Kolaczyk ([email protected]), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.