How Robust is the Internet? - Insights from Graph Analysis

The importance of the Internet as todays communication and information medium cannot be underestimated. Reduced Internet reliability can lead to significant financial losses for businesses and economies. But how robust is the Internet with respect to failures, accidents, and malicious attacks? We will investigate this question from the perspective of graph analysis. First, we develop a graph model of the Internet at the level of Autonomous Systems based on empirical data. Then, a global assessment of Internet robustness is conducted with respect to several failure and attack modes. Our results indicate that even today the Internet could be very vulnerable to smart attack strategies.

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