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Error and attack tolerance of complex networks
From: InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 02:52:18 -0600 (CST)
Forwarded from: R. A. Hettinga <rah () shipwright com> 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.
---- 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 () 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' - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomo () attrition org with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
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