Internet path inflation due to policy routing

Abstract
In our previous work, we used a simplified model of routing policy in the Internet to study the impact of policy routing on Internet path-lengths. This prior work suffered from two shortcomings--it was based on a single snapshot of the Internet topology, and our simplified policy model could generate AS paths that violate peering relationships. In this paper, we address these two shortcomings by re-examining our results with respect to a more recent snapshot of the Internet, and improving the policy model to avoid peering violation. We find that our prior observations regarding the path inflation due to routing policy appear to hold both across time and with respect to a more sophisticated model of routing policy.
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