The Impact of 16-bit and 32-bit ASNs Coexistence on the Accuracy of Internet AS Graph

Modeling Internet structure as an autonomous system (AS) graph has attracted researchers over years. AS graph model demonstrates the power-law distribution of the Internet. It also demonstrates the relationship between the cluster coefficient and the small-world structure of the Internet. To obtain an accurate AS graph model, the data used to generate the graph should be massive and correct. In this work, we studied the correctness of the data that is utilized to generate Internet AS graph. We conducted an experiment to measure the popularity of 32-bit AS numbers (ASNs) in the Internet. We examined the impact of the special purpose 16-bit reserved ASN AS23456 on the accuracy of the AS graph. To this end, we proposed a cleaning algorithm to correct the conflict that AS23456 produces. Our results show that the current existing method of mapping 16-bit and 32-bit ASNs reduces the fidelity of the constructed AS graph to various graph parameters.