Resiliency of network topologies under path-based attacks

Network topology has no direct effect on the correctness of network protocols, however, it influences the performance of networks and their survivability when they are under attack. Recent studies have analyzed the robustness of the Internet in the face of faults or attacks which may cause node failures. However, the effect of link failure or a series of link failures has not been extensively examined, even though such a situation is more likely to occur in the current Internet environment. In this paper, we propose an attack-and-failure graph model and practical techniques for attacking strategies against nodes, edges or paths in order to reflect real-life attack scenarios. The resiliency of Internet topologies is examined under the attacking strategies, with various metrics including path-failure ratio and "attack power," which is defined as the ratio of the failure to attack. The experiments reveal that "path-based" attacks can result in greater damage to the connectivity of a network than the other types of attack. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of an attack depends on the objective that the attacker wants to achieve through the attack. The proposed simple but formalized approach can be a springboard for developing more resilient Internet topologies in a variety of aspects.