Asymptotic behaviour of gossip processes and small world networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the asymptotic behavior of small world networks and gossip processes, revealing that their characteristic features can be understood through the branching nature of their models, affecting distances and reachability.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the common behavior of these models can be explained by the limit random variable of the branching process, providing new insights into their structure.

Findings

Distances between points are reduced by long-range connections.

Proportion of space reachable within a certain distance can be approximated by branching process limits.

Both models exhibit similar asymptotic behavior due to their local branching structure.

Abstract

Both small world models of random networks with occasional long range connections and gossip processes with occasional long range transmission of information have similar characteristic behaviour. The long range elements appreciably reduce the effective distances, measured in space or in time, between pairs of typical points. In this paper, we show that their common behaviour can be interpreted as a product of the locally branching nature of the models. In particular, it is shown that both typical distances between points and the proportion of space that can be reached within a given distance or time can be approximated by formulae involving the limit random variable of the branching process.