On the Packet Delay Distribution in Power-Law Networks

Measurement studies of the Internet topology have revealed that the degree distribution exhibits a power-law attribute. In this paper, the authors investigate packet-level delay behavior of topologies having power-law degree distribution. Their results show that the packet delay distribution of the actual ISP topology also follows the power-law, while the delay distribution of model-based topology does not. They, then investigate the structural differences between the topologies, and show that the modularity structure of ISP's router-level topologies makes the packet delay distribution being long-tail.