Characterising the robustness of complex networks
by A. Sydney, C. Scoglio, M. Youssef, P. Schumm
International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (IJITST), Vol. 2, No. 3/4, 2010

Abstract: With increasingly ambitious initiatives such as GENI and FIND that seek to design future internets, it becomes imperative to define the characteristics of robust topologies, and build future networks optimised for robustness. This paper investigates the characteristics of network topologies that maintain a high level of throughput in spite of multiple attacks. To this end, we select network topologies belonging to the main network models and some real world networks. We consider three types of attacks: removal of random nodes, high degree nodes, and high betweenness nodes. We use elasticity as our robustness measure and, through our analysis, illustrate different topologies that can have different degrees of robustness. In particular, elasticity can fall as low as 0.8% of the upper bound based on the attack employed. This result substantiates the need for optimised network topology design. Furthermore, we implement a trade-off function that combines elasticity under the three attack strategies and considers the cost of the network. Our extensive simulations show that, for a given network density, regular and semi-regular topologies can have higher degrees of robustness than heterogeneous topologies, and that link redundancy is a sufficient but not necessary condition for robustness.

Online publication date: Mon, 06-Dec-2010

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (IJITST):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com