Towards Modelling The Internet Topology - The Interactive Growth Model

The Internet topology at the Autonomous Systems level (AS graph) has a power--law degree distribution and a tier structure. In this paper, we introduce the Interactive Growth (IG) model based on the joint growth of new nodes and new links. This simple and dynamic model compares favorable with other Internet power--law topology generators because it not only closely resembles the degree distribution of the AS graph, but also accurately matches the hierarchical structure, which is measured by the recently reported rich-club phenomenon.