Evolution and Structure of the Internet: A Statistical Physics Approach

by Romualdo Pastor-Satorras, Alessandro Vespignani

Overview

Viewed in this analysis from a statistical physics perspective, the Internet is perceived as a developing system that evolves through the addition and removal of nodes and links. This perspective permits the authors to outline the dynamical theory that can appropriately describe the Internet's macroscopic evolution. The presence of such a theoretical framework will provide a revolutionary way of enhancing the reader's understanding of the Internet's varied network processes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521826983
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/12/2004
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	7.09(w) x 10.04(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Romualdo Pastor-Satorras got his PhD at the University of Barcelona. He has been research fellow at Yale University and research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. He spent two years as a research fellow at the International Center for Theoretical Physics (UNESCO) and then moved back to Spain in 2000 as Assistant Professor at the University of Barcelona. Since 2001, Pastor-Satorras has been research scientist and lecturer at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. He is the author of more than 40 research papers in different areas of non-equilibrium statistical physics, condensed matter theory and complex systems analysis.

Alessandro Vespignani obtained his PhD at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza'. After holding research positions at Yale and Leiden University, he joined the condensed matter research group at the International Center for Theoretical Physics (UNESCO) in Trieste. He has authored more than 100 scientific papers on the statistical physics of non-equilibrium phenomena, critical phase transitions and complex and disordered systems. At present he is senior research scientist of the CNRS, at the Université de Paris-Sud, France.

Table of Contents

Preface; List of abbreviations; 1. A brief history of the Internet; 2. How the Internet works; 3. Measuring the global Internet; 4. The Internet's large-scale topology; 5. Modeling the Internet; 6. Internet robustness; 7. Virtual and social networks in the Internet; 8. Searching and walking on the Internet; 9. Epidemics in the Internet; 10. Beyond the Internet's skeleton: traffic and global performance; 11. Outlook; Appendix I: graph theory applied to topology analysis; Appendix II: interface resolution and router topology; Appendix III: numerical analysis of heavy-tailed distributions; Appendix IV: degree correlations; Appendix V: scale-free networks: scaling relations; Appendix VI: the SIR model of virus propagation; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...a good point of reference or entry-level introduction to complex networks ... definitely an interesting read."
Journal of Statistical Physics

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