2002/09/19 by Yamir Moreno, Y. Moreno, Romualdo Pastor‐Satorras +5 · 198 citations
Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Cascading failure #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Complex network #Computer network #Computer science #Distributed computing #Electric power system #Electrical engineering #Engineering #Network topology #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics #Power (physics) #Scale (ratio) #Scale-free network #Stochastic processes and statistical mechanics #Telecommunications network #Topology (electrical circuits) #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/epl/i2003-00140-7
published in Europhysics Letters (EPL) 62(2), 292-298 (Institute of Physics) · 4 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2002/09/19 · openalex publication_date 2003/04/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the tolerance to congestion failures in communication networks with scale-free topology. The traffic load carried by each damaged element in the network must be partly or totally redistributed among the remaining elements. Overloaded elements might fail on their turn, triggering the occurrence of failure cascades able to isolate large parts of the network. We find a critical traffic load above which the probability of massive traffic congestions destroying the network communication capabilities is finite.