Measurements of the hopcount in internet

End-to-end quality of service is very likely to depend on the hopcount, the number of traversed routers. The hopcount also enhances our understanding of properties of the Internet topology. In this paper we present the results of the measurements of the hopcount from a source at Delft towards several destinations spread over three continents. Fitting the data with our theoretical model illustrates that the number of routers based on our measurements is around 98400. The dynamics in the change of the hopcount is investigated, it was found that though there is virtually no short-term change in the average hopcount the individual hopcounts do change significantly. When investigating the changes in the paths to the sites within these continents, rapid changes in the paths were observed to barely affect the hopcount.Network Architectures and ServicesElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc