Physics – Condensed Matter – Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
Scientific paper
2000-08-03
Nature 406, 378-382 (2000)
Physics
Condensed Matter
Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
14 pages, 4 figures, Latex
Scientific paper
10.1038/35019019
Many complex systems, such as communication networks, display a surprising degree of robustness: while key components regularly malfunction, local failures rarely lead to the loss of the global information-carrying ability of the network. The stability of these complex systems is often attributed to the redundant wiring of the functional web defined by the systems' components. In this paper we demonstrate that error tolerance is not shared by all redundant systems, but it is displayed only by a class of inhomogeneously wired networks, called scale-free networks. We find that scale-free networks, describing a number of systems, such as the World Wide Web, Internet, social networks or a cell, display an unexpected degree of robustness, the ability of their nodes to communicate being unaffected by even unrealistically high failure rates. However, error tolerance comes at a high price: these networks are extremely vulnerable to attacks, i.e. to the selection and removal of a few nodes that play the most important role in assuring the network's connectivity.
Albert Reka
Barabasi Albert-László
Jeong Hawoong
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