%0 Journal Article
%T Network Topology Models for Multihop Wireless Networks
%A Andr¨˘s Farag¨®
%J ISRN Communications and Networking
%D 2012
%R 10.5402/2012/362603
%X A typical feature of huge, random network topologies is that they are too large to allow a fully detailed description. Such enormous, complex network topologies are encountered in numerous settings and have generated many research investigations. Well-known examples are the Internet and its logical overlay networks, such as the World Wide Web as well as online social networks. At the same time, extensive and rapidly growing wireless ad hoc and sensor networks also lead to hard topology modeling questions. In the current paper, we primarily focus on large, random wireless networks but also consider Web and Internet models. We survey a number of existing models that aim at describing the network topology. We also exhibit common generalizations of various sets of models that cover a number of known constructions as special cases. We demonstrate that higher levels of abstraction, despite their very general nature, can still be meaningfully analyzed and offers quite useful and unique help in solving certain hard networking problems. We believe that this research area can and will generate further significant contributions to the analysis of very large networks. 1. Introduction Many of the communication networks that we use today, or expect to use in the future, have enormous size. This applies not only to the physical networks, including the Internet as well as emerging ubiquitous wireless networks and large scale sensor networks, but also, or even more, to logical overlay networks, such as the World Wide Web. For example, the number of web pages, according already to a 2006 article [1], was as high as 53.7 billion, already at the time of writing that study. Out of the 53.7 billion, 34.7 billion web pages were indexed by Google. Since then, these numbers grew even further. Beyond the sheer size, the usage of these networks is also expected to be extremely heterogeneous, encompassing a huge number of different applications, traffic patterns, diverse requirements, and areas, including business, science, learning, entertainment, and social networking. At the same time, their physical basis is also heterogeneous, including wired, wireless, and optical subnetworks. All this is expected to eventually merge into a ubiquitous, global sociotechnical infrastructure. To understand and reason about huge socio-technical networks, including methods for designing/optimizing them, the traditional network analysis and modeling approaches are generally insufficient, due to their limited scalability. Simulation is usually feasible only up to a rather limited network size.
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.communications.networking/2012/362603/