  This paper takes a critical look at the usefulness of power law models of the
Internet. The twin focuses of the paper are Internet traffic and topology
generation. The aim of the paper is twofold. Firstly it summarises the state of
the art in power law modelling particularly giving attention to existing open
research questions. Secondly it provides insight into the failings of such
models and where progress needs to be made for power law research to feed
through to actual improvements in network performance.
