Issue |
EPL
Volume 80, Number 5, December 2007
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 58002 | |
Number of page(s) | 5 | |
Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/80/58002 | |
Published online | 31 October 2007 |
Scale-free networks resistant to intentional attacks
Department of Physics, University of Thessaloniki - 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Received:
30
July
2007
Accepted:
9
October
2007
We study the detailed mechanism of the failure of scale-free networks under
intentional attacks. Although it is generally accepted that such networks are very sensitive to targeted attacks, we show that
for a particular type of structure such networks surprisingly remain very robust even under removal of a large fraction of their nodes,
which in some cases can be up to 70%. The degree distribution of these structures is such that for small values of the
degree k the distribution is constant with k, up to a
critical value kc, and thereafter it decays with k with the usual power law.
We describe in detail a model for such a scale-free network with this modified degree distribution, and we show both analytically and via
simulations, that this model can adequately describe all the features and breakdown characteristics of these attacks.
We have found several experimental networks with such features, such as
for example the IMDB actors collaboration network or the citations network, whose resilience to attacks
can be accurately described by our model.
PACS: 89.75.Hc – Networks and genealogical trees / 89.75.Da – Systems obeying scaling laws / 87.23.Ge – Dynamics of social systems
© Europhysics Letters Association, 2007
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