Network analysis issues for a public Internet

H. W. Braun and K. Claffy
Applied Network Research
San Diego Supercomputer Center,
University of California, San Diego

While initially conceived as a dedicated communications facility for the United States federal government, today's Internet aggregates traffic from among a far wider set of constituencies. Pooling resources of so many constituents into a massively interconnected environment raises the issue of resource and cost allocation. In this paper we describe the importance of network analysis in support of resource attribution and evaluate a number of examples. We offer evidence to support our hypothesis that, in the face of the current evolution of global information infrastructure, vastly expanding both in ubiquity and sophistication of applications, Internet policy considerations and network analysis must begin to interact in ways not previously recognized or implemented. In particular, as the scale of, access to, and commercialization of the Internet broadens, cost allocation among (even globally) shared resources will require the development of new accounting and billing models to accommodate the wide range of players and services.