Error and attack tolerance of complex networks

[R. A. Hettinga]

http://www.nd.edu/~networks/Papers/nature_attack.pdf

Error and attack tolerance of complex networks
Reka Albert, Hawoong Jeong & Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Department of Physics, 225 Nieuwland Science Hall, University of Notre Dame,
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA

<....>

> In summary, we find that scale-free networks display a surprisingly high
>degree of tolerance against random failures, a property not shared by
>their exponential counterparts. This robustness is probably the basis of
>the error tolerance of many complex systems, ranging from cells 8 to
>distributed communication systems. It also explains why, despite frequent
>router problems 23, we rarely experience global network outages or,
>despite the temporary unavailability of many web pages, our ability to
>surf and locate information on the web is unaffected. However, the error
>tolerance comes at the expense of attack survivability: the diameter of
>these networks increases rapidly and they break into many isolated
>fragments when the most connected nodes are targeted. Such decreased
>attack survivability is useful for drug design 8, but it is less
>encouraging for communication systems, such as the Internet or the WWW.
>Although it is generally thought that attacks on networks with distributed
>resource management are less successful, our results indicate otherwise.
>The topological weaknesses of the current communication networks, rooted
>in their inhomogeneous connectivity distribution, seriously reduce their
>attack survivability. This could be exploited by those seeking to damage
>these systems.

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See also:

http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek/pajekman.htm which looks like
an interesting package for graphing complex network structures...


Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'



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