What is Self-Similarity

In the mid 90’s, the Internet has started its metamorphosis from a tool restricted to the scientific community into a crucial component of the modern information society. The evolution in the last 15 years from 2,000 to 180,000 active BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) entries as of March 2006 (Smith, 2006) witnesses this metamorphosis and is an indication on how complex Internet has become. Possibly, the most significant consequence of the huge success of the Internet is that the common goal and collaborative spirit that used to guide its players no longer holds because of the large diversity we find in today’s Internet. Users, commercial access providers, governments, telecommunication operators, and content providers usually have opposite interests in using the network, commonly leading to a situation where they co-exist in a tussle (Clark, Wroclawski, Sollins, & Braden, 2002). For instance, large network operators need to be interconnected to obtain and offer universal connectivity, even if they are often fierce competitors. As a result, the heterogeneity and fully distributed administration of the Internet, allied to its extensive geographic coverage and to its dynamism in applications and network traffic, impose great challenges to the characterization of the structure and behavior of the Internet as a whole (Floyd & Paxson, 2001; Spring, Wetherall, & Anderson, 2003a).