[e2e] New BRITE Topology Generator

[Ibrahim Matta]

Dear Colleagues,

Please find the new version of our BRITE 
topology generator at   http://www.cs.bu.edu/brite
An abstract is attached below.

Your feedback/comments are really appreciated.

Best regards,
ibrahim

  ** Apologies if you receive multiple copies **

--
Ibrahim Matta         Dept of Comp Sci, 111 Cummington St, MCS-271
Assistant Professor   Boston University, Boston, MA 02215
matta at cs.bu.edu       http://www.cs.bu.edu/faculty/matta/

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BRITE: Universal Topology Generation from a User's Perspective

http://www.cs.bu.edu/brite

Alberto Medina, Anukool Lakhina, Ibrahim Matta, John Byers

Computer Science Department
Boston University
BUCS-TR-2001-003



ABSTRACT:

Effective engineering  of the Internet  is predicated upon  a detailed
understanding  of issues  such  as the  large-scale  structure of  its
underlying  physical topology,  the manner  in which  it  evolves over
time, and  the way in  which its constituent components  contribute to
its overall function.   Unfortunately, developing a deep understanding
of these issues has proven to  be a challenging task, since it in turn
involves  solving  difficult  problems  such  as  mapping  the  actual
topology, characterizing  it, and  developing models that  capture its
emergent behavior.   Consequently, even though  there are a  number of
topology models, it  is an open question as  to how representative the
topologies they generate  are of the actual Internet.   Our goal is to
produce a  topology generation framework  which improves the  state of
the   art  and   is   based  on   design   principles  which   include
representativeness,      inclusiveness,      and     interoperability.
Representativeness  leads  to  synthetic  topologies  that  accurately
reflect   many  aspects   of  the   actual  Internet   topology  (e.g.
hierarchical  structure,  degree  distribution, etc.).   Inclusiveness
combines the strengths  of as many generation models  as possible in a
single  generation  tool.   Interoperability  provides  interfaces  to
widely-used  simulation applications  such as  ns and  SSF as  well as
visualization applications.  We call such a tool a "universal topology
generator".

In this paper  we discuss the design, implementation  and usage of the
BRITE universal topology generation tool  that we have built.  We also
describe the  BRITE Analysis Engine,  BRIANA, which is  an independent
piece  of software  designed  and  built upon  BRITE  design goals  of
flexibility and extensibility.   The purpose of BRIANA is  to act as a
repository of analysis routines  along with a user--friendly interface
that allows its use on different topology formats.


KEYWORDS: 

Topology  generation, graph models,  network topology,  growth models,
annotated topologies, simulation environments.