Despite the apparent randomness of the Internet, we discover some surprisingly simple power-laws of the Internet topology. These power-laws hold for three snapshots of the Internet, between November 1997 and December 1998, despite a 45% growth of its size during that period. We show that our power-laws fit the real data very well resulting in correlation coefficients of 96% or higher.Our observations provide a novel perspective of the structure of the Internet. The power-laws describe concisely skewed distributions of graph properties such as the node outdegree. In addition, these power-laws can be used to estimate important parameters such as the average neighborhood size, and facilitate the design and the performance analysis of protocols. Furthermore, we can use them to generate and select realistic topologies for simulation purposes.

/pdf/on-power-law-relationships-of-the-internet-topology-19fp34v7ee.pdf

On power-law relationships of the Internet topology

This document describes an updated version of the "Security
Architecture for IP", which is designed to provide security services
for traffic at the IP layer. This document obsoletes RFC 2401
(November 1998). [STANDARDS-TRACK]

/pdf/security-architecture-for-the-internet-protocol-1x2l107p1d.pdf

Security Architecture for the Internet Protocol

This document describes the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). SCTP is designed to transport PSTN signaling messages over IP networks, but is capable of broader applications.

Stream Control Transmission Protocol

In a system in which noncooperative agents share a common resource, we propose the ratio between the worst possible Nash equilibrium and the social optimum as a measure of the effectiveness of the system. Deriving upper and lower bounds for this ratio in a model in which several agents share a very simple network leads to some interesting mathematics, results, and open problems.

Worst-case equilibria

This paper considers the potentially negative impacts of an increasing deployment of non-congestion-controlled best-effort traffic on the Internet. These negative impacts range from extreme unfairness against competing TCP traffic to the potential for congestion collapse. To promote the inclusion of end-to-end congestion control in the design of future protocols using best-effort traffic, we argue that router mechanisms are needed to identify and restrict the bandwidth of selected high-bandwidth best-effort flows in times of congestion. The paper discusses several general approaches for identifying those flows suitable for bandwidth regulation. These approaches are to identify a high-bandwidth flow in times of congestion as unresponsive, "not TCP-friendly", or simply using disproportionate bandwidth. A flow that is not "TCP-friendly" is one whose long-term arrival rate exceeds that of any conformant TCP in the same circumstances. An unresponsive flow is one failing to reduce its offered load at a router in response to an increased packet drop rate, and a disproportionate-bandwidth flow is one that uses considerably more bandwidth than other flows in a time of congestion.

/pdf/promoting-the-use-of-end-to-end-congestion-control-in-the-86ipvhets3.pdf

Promoting the use of end-to-end congestion control in the Internet

This memo presents two recommendations to the Internet community concerning measures to improve and preserve Internet performance. It presents a strong recommendation for testing, standardization, and widespread deployment of active queue management in routers, to improve the performance of today's Internet. It also urges a concerted effort of research, measurement, and ultimate deployment of router mechanisms to protect the Internet from flows that are not sufficiently responsive to congestion notification.

/pdf/recommendations-on-queue-management-and-congestion-avoidance-3n68hmhhg4.pdf

Recommendations on Queue Management and Congestion Avoidance in the Internet

This document specifies Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode
(PIM-SM). PIM-SM is a multicast routing protocol that can use the
underlying unicast routing information base or a separate multicast-
capable routing information base. It builds unidirectional shared
trees rooted at a Rendezvous Point (RP) per group, and optionally
creates shortest-path trees per source. This document obsoletes RFC
2362, an Experimental version of PIM-SM. [STANDARDS-TRACK]

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/pdfrfc/rfc2362.txt.pdf

Protocol Independent Multicast-Sparse Mode (PIM-SM): Protocol Specification

This RFC describes a distance-vector-style routing protocol for
routing multicast datagrams through an internet. It is derived from
the Routing Information Protocol (RIP), and implements multicasting as
described in RFC-1054. This is an experimental protocol, and its
implementation is not recommended at this time.

Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol

This memo describes a technique for dynamically discovering the maximum transmission unit (MTU) of an arbitrary internet path. It specifies a small change to the way routers generate one type of ICMP message. For a path that passes through a router that has not been so changed, this technique might not discover the correct Path MTU, but it will always choose a Path MTU as accurate as, and in many cases more accurate than, the Path MTU that would be chosen by current practice.

Path MTU discovery

This document describes Path MTU Discovery for IP version 6. It is largely derived from RFC 1191, which describes Path MTU Discovery for IP version 4.

/pdf/path-mtu-discovery-for-ip-version-6-3dpotd98ue.pdf

S. Deering

Papers

Recommendations on Queue Management and Congestion Avoidance in the Internet

Protocol Independent Multicast-Sparse Mode (PIM-SM): Protocol Specification

Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol

Path MTU discovery

Path MTU Discovery for IP version 6