Mixing Biases: Structural Changes in the AS Topology Evolution

In this paper we study the structural evolution of the AS topology as inferred from two different datasets over a period of seven years. We use a variety of topological metrics to analyze the structural differences revealed in the AS topologies inferred from the two different datasets. In particular, to focus on the evolution of the relationship between the core and the periphery, we make use of a recently introduced topological metric, the weighted spectral distribution.

We find that the traceroute dataset has increasing difficulty in sampling the periphery of the AS topology, largely due to limitations inherent to active probing. Such a dataset has too limited a view to properly observe topological changes at the AS-level compared to a dataset largely based on BGP data. We also highlight limitations in current measurements that require a better sampling of particular topological properties of the Internet. Our results indicate that the Internet is changing from a core-centered, strongly customer-provider oriented, disassortative network, to a soft-hierarchical, peering-oriented, assortative network.