Internet mapping projects generally consist in sampling the network from a limited set of sources by usingtraceroute probes. This methodology, akin to the merging of spanning trees from the different sources to a set of destinations, leads necessarily to a partial, incomplete map of the Internet. Accordingly, determination of Internet topology characteristics from such sampled maps is in part a problem of statistical inference. Our contribution begins with the observation that the inference of many of the most basic topological quantities ‐ including network size and degree characteristics ‐ fromtraceroute measurements is in fact a version of the so-called ‘species problem’ in statistics. This obse rvation has important implications, since species problems are often quite challenging. We focus here on the most fundamental example of atraceroute internet species: the number of nodes in a network. Specifica lly,
['Fabien Viger', 'Alain Barrat', "Luca Dall'Asta", 'Cun-Hui Zhang', 'Eric D. Kolaczyk']
Network Inference from TraceRoute Measurements: Internet Topology `Species'