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COMMUNICATION PROCESSES
Part of the interest on complex networks comes from the attempt to understand the behavior of technology based communication networks such as the Internet, the World Wide Web, e-mail networks or phone call networks. The study of communication processes is also of interest in other fields, notably in the design of organizations. Actually, it is estimated that more than one-half of the U.S. work force is dedicated to information processing, rather than to make or sell things in the narrow sense.
Tools taken from statistical mechanics are used to understand not only the topological properties of these communication networks, but also their dynamical properties. Particularly interesting is the phenomenon of congestion. In has been observed, both in real networks and in model communication networks, that the system only behaves eficiently when the amount of information handled is small enough. The network collapses above a certain threshold and some information is accumulated and remains undelivered over large time periods or it is simply lost. This transition from a free to a congested regime is indeed a phase transition and could be related to the appearance of the 1/f noise observed in Internet data.
Congestion and criticality
Arenas, Danon, Díaz-Guilera, Guimerà, Local search with congestion in complex communication networks, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3038, 1078-1085 (2004).
Guimerà,
Arenas, Díaz-Guilera, Giralt, Dynamical
properties of model communication networks, Physical Review E 66,
026704 (2002). Guimerà,
Díaz-Guilera, Arenas, Communication
and optimal hierarchical networks, Physica A 299,
247-252 (2001). Arenas, Díaz-Guilera,
Guimerà, Communication
in networks with hierarchical branching, Physical Review Letters
86, 3196-3199 (2001). Optimal
communication networks Guimerà,
Arenas, Díaz-Guilera, Vega-Redondo, Cabrales, Optimal
network topologies for local search with congestion, Physical Review
Letters 89, 248701 (2002). Arenas, Cabrales, Díaz-Guilera, Guimerà,
Vega-Redondo, Search
and congestion in complex networks, in Statistical Mechanics of Complex
Networks (ed. Pastor-Satorras, Rubí, Díaz-Guilera) (2003). Real
communication networks Guimerà,
Danon, Díaz-Guilera, Giralt, Arenas, Self-similar community structure in a network of
human interactions, Physical Review E 68, 065103 (2003).
Featured in Nature and El
País.
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