Navigating Ultrasmall Worlds in Ultrashort Time

Random scale-free networks are ultrasmall worlds. The average length of the shortest paths in networks of size N scales as ln  ln  N . Here we show that these ultrasmall worlds can be navigated in ultrashort time. Greedy routing on scale-free networks embedded in metric spaces finds paths with the...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Boguñá, Marián, Krioukov, Dmitri
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2009
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/140070
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/140070
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Xarxes d'àrea extensa (Xarxes d'ordinadors)
Wide area networks (Computer networks)
Descripción
Sumario:Random scale-free networks are ultrasmall worlds. The average length of the shortest paths in networks of size N scales as ln  ln  N . Here we show that these ultrasmall worlds can be navigated in ultrashort time. Greedy routing on scale-free networks embedded in metric spaces finds paths with the average length scaling also as ln  ln  N . Greedy routing uses only local information to navigate a network. Nevertheless, it finds asymptotically the shortest paths, a direct computation of which requires global topology knowledge. Our findings imply that the peculiar structure of complex networks ensures that the lack of global topological awareness has asymptotically no impact on the length of communication paths. These results have important consequences for communication systems such as the Internet, where maintaining knowledge of current topology is a major scalability bottleneck.