A comparative study of IXPin europe and US from a complex network perspective

Abstract

A significant change in the Internet ecology due to the launch of Internet exchange points (IXPs) has been witnessed in recent years. The traffic exchange services of IXP make the traffic delivery between autonomous systems (ASes) not only lower in cost but also higher in efficiency. However, the business models of IXP are different in various regions, and hence their impacts would be different. In this paper, we investigate and compare their impacts in Europe and in US. The study is conducted, firstly, based on a bi-layered network framework which can characterize AS-IXP topologies properly. Secondly, the potential usage of IXP in routing service is investigated by using control exchange point (CXP). Our simulation results show that IXP industry flourishes better in Europe than in US. In addition, the IXP has high potential to be involved in routing service as it is effective and stable.