Assigning AS relationships to satisfy the Gao-Rexford conditions

Abstract

Compliance with the Gao-Rexford conditions [1] is perhaps the most realistic explanation of Internet routing stability, although BGP is renowned to be prone to oscillations. Informally, the Gao-Rexford conditions assume that (i) the business relationships between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) yield a hierarchy, (ii) each ISP behaves in a rational way, i.e., it does not offer transit to other ISPs for free, and (iii) each ISP ranks routes through customers better than routes through providers and peers.