Recent progress in network topology modeling [1], [2] has shown that it is
possible to create smaller-scale replicas of large complex networks, like the
Internet, while simultaneously preserving several important topological
properties. However, the constructed replicas do not include notions of
capacities and latencies, and the fundamental question of whether smaller
networks can reproduce the performance of larger networks remains unanswered.
We address this question in this letter, and show that it is possible to
predict the performance of larger networks from smaller replicas, as long as
the right link capacities and propagation delays are assigned to the replica's
links. Our procedure is inspired by techniques introduced in [2] and combines a
time-downscaling argument from [3]. We show that significant computational
savings can be achieved when simulating smaller-scale replicas with TCP and UDP
traffic, with simulation times being reduced by up to two orders of magnitude.Comment: To appear in IEEE Communications Letter
