ID:
publications-4706
Type:
article
Year:
2001
Authors:
Cohen, Reuven and Cohen, Reuven and Erez, Keren and Erez, Keren and benβ€Avraham, Daniel and ben-Avraham, Daniel and Havlin, Shlomo and Havlin, Shlomo
Title:
Breakdown of the internet under intentional attack.
Venue/Journal:
Physical Review Letters
DOI:
10.1103/physrevlett.86.3682
Research type:
Water System:
Technical Focus:
Abstract:
We study the tolerance of random networks to intentional attack, whereby a fraction $p$ of the most connected sites is removed. We focus on scale-free networks, having connectivity distribution $P(k)\ensuremath{\sim}{k}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$, and use percolation theory to study analytically and numerically the critical fraction ${p}_{c}$ needed for the disintegration of the network, as well as the size of the largest connected cluster. We find that even networks with $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\le}3$, known to be resilient to random removal of sites, are sensitive to intentional attack. We also argue that, near criticality, the average distance between sites in the spanning (largest) cluster scales with its mass, $M$, as $\sqrt{M}$, rather than as ${log}_{k}M$, as expected for random networks away from criticality.
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