2003/12/18 by Ingve Simonsen, Kasper Astrup Eriksen, Sergei Maslov +1 · 2 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Combinatorics #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Complex network #Computer network #Computer science #Diffusion #Friendship #Mathematics #Modular design #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics #Preferential attachment #Routing (electronic design automation) #Scale (ratio) #Social Capital and Networks #Sociology #The Internet #Topology (electrical circuits) #World Wide Web #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physa.2004.01.021
published as Physica A 336,163 (2004). · Latex, 13 pages, 4 figures (To appear Physica A)
arxiv created 2003/12/18 · openalex publication_date 2004/02/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A diffusion process on complex networks is introduced in order to uncover their large scale topological structures. This is achieved by focusing on the slowest decaying diffusive modes of the network. The proposed procedure is applied to real-world networks like a friendship network of known modular structure, and an Internet routing network. For the friendship network, its known structure is well reproduced. In case of the Internet, where the structure is far less well-known, one indeed finds a modular structure, and modules can roughly be associated with individual countries. Quantitatively the modular structure of the Internet manifests itself in an approximately 10 times larger participation ratio of its slowest decaying modes as compared to the null model -- a random scale-free network. The extreme edges of the Internet are found to correspond to Russian and US military sites.