Understanding Network Complexity

Our networks have evolved to be extremely complex and we do not understand them. The Internet, for example, is complex. In 1970 we could draw the four‐node DARPAnet on a napkin. Forty years later, due to its scale and dynamic nature, the Internet is too complex to draw, let alone understand, model, or predict its behavior. The Internet is computer science’s gift to society, but ironically we cannot even describe it.